"
The rough words beat like the blows of the waves on the bows of the rickety
boat from Lima in the days when Dick was mixing paints, making love, drawing
devils and angels in the half dark, and wondering whether the next minute would
put the Italian captain's knife between his shoulder-blades. And the go-fever
which is more real than many doctors' diseases, waked and raged, urging him who
loved Maisie beyond anything in the world, to go away and taste the old hot,
unregenerate life again,--to scuffle, swear, gamble, and love light loves with
his fellows; to take ship and know the sea once more, and by her beget
pictures; to talk to Binat among the sands of Port Said while Yellow Tina mixed
the drinks; to hear the crackle of musketry, and see the smoke roll outward,
thin and thicken again till the shining black faces came through, and in that
hell every man was strictly responsible for his own head, and his own alone,
and struck with an unfettered arm. It was impossible, utterly impossible, but--
"'Oh, our fathers in the churchyard, She is older than ye, And our graves will
be the greener,' Said The Men of the Sea."
"What is there to hinder?" said Torpenhow, in the long hush that followed the
song.
"You said a little time since that you wouldn't come for a walk round the
world, Torp.
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