y Islands out of the water one by one,
and I went into the lower deck, and did my picture on the port side as
far forward in her as I could go. There was some brown paint and some
green paint that they used for the boats, and some black paint for
ironwork, and that was all I had.'

'The passengers must have thought you mad.'

'There was only one, and it was a woman; but it gave me the notion of my
picture.'

'What was she like?' said Torpenhow.

'She was a sort of Negroid-Jewess-Cuban; with morals to match. She
couldn't read or write, and she didn't want to, but she used to come
down and watch me paint, and the skipper didn't like it, because he was
paying her passage and had to be on the bridge occasionally.'

'I see. That must have been cheerful.'

'It was the best time I ever had. To begin with, we didn't know whether
we should go up or go down any minute when there was a sea on; and when
it was calm it was paradise; and the woman used to mix the paints
and talk broken English, and the skipper used to steal down every few
minutes to the lower deck, because he said he was afraid of fire.
So, you see, we could never tell when we might be caught, and I had a
splendid notion to work out in only three keys of colour.'

'What was the notion?'

'Two lines in Poe--

Neither the angles in Heaven above nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

It came out of the sea--all by itself. I drew that fight, fought out in
green water over the naked, choking soul, and the woman served as the
model for the devils and the angels both--sea-devils and sea-angels,
and the soul half drowned between them. It doesn't sound much, but when
there was a good light on the lower deck it looked very fine and creepy.
It was seven by fourteen feet, all done in shifting light for shifting
light.'

'Did the woman inspire you much?' said Torpenhow.

'She and the sea between them--immensely. There was a heap of bad
drawing in that picture. I remember I went out of my way to foreshorten
for sheer delight of doing it, and I foreshortened damnably, but for all
that it's the best thing I've ever done; and now I suppose the ship's
broken up or gone down. Whew! What a time that was!'

'What happened after all?'

'It all ended. They were loading her with wool when I left the ship, but
even the stevedores kept the picture clear to the last. The eyes of the
demons scared them, I hones