he pondered.
Men--whether "blighters" in Kalliope's mouth conveyed reproach or
were simply a synonym for men she did not know--men in a ship--"mucky"
described the ship as little probably as "damn boxes" described the
packing-cases of furniture or "bloody" her trunks of clothes. Men
in a ship had brought the tanks, had rowed them--"go row" was plain
enough--ashore in boats.

"But who," said the Queen, "and why?"

Kalliope was beaten. Who and why were too much for her, as indeed they
have been for people far wiser than she. Are not all theology and all
philosophy attempts, and for the most part vain attempts, to deal
with just those two words, who and why?

"Blighters," said Kalliope, and the echoes repeated her words with
emphasis, "blighters, blighters, blighters," till the Queen came to
believe it.

Then Kalliope, memory wakened in her, grew suddenly hopeful. She began
to hum a tune, very softly at first, making more than one false start;
but getting it nearly right at last. The Queen recognized it. She had
heard it a hundred times in old days at prayers in the chapel of her
college. It was a hymn tune. The words came back to her at once.
"Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion, city of our God." She took
Kalliope by the arm and led her back to the boat.

"Come away," she said, "quick, quick. I'm going mad."

Kalliope entered into the spirit of a new game. She ran down across
the rolling pebbles.

"Go row," she said. "Quick, quick."

The boat, Kalliope pushing, dragging, rowing, burst from the cavern,
fled beyond the shadow of the cliffs, glided into the blaze of
sunshine and the sparkling water of the outer bay. The Queen lay back
in the stern and laughed. Kalliope, resting on her oars, laughed too.
The Queen's laughter passed into an uncontrollable fit. Tears rolled
down her cheeks. Her sides were sore. She gasped for breath. The
thought of that row of portentously solemn grey tanks was irresistibly
comic. They looked like stranded codfish with their tongues out. They
looked like a series of caricatures of an American politician, a
square-headed ponderous man, who had once dined with her father. He
had the same appearance of imbecile gravity, the same enormous
pomposity. The copper spouts were so many exaggerated versions of his
nose.

Her imagination flew to a vision of the men who had brought the tanks
and cisterns there in a "mucky ship." She seemed to see them, thin
scarecrows of men, crawling ove