Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (160 page)

"I
don't
think
you're
treating
me
quite
fairly,"
I
said,
speaking under
strong
restraint.

"I've
given
you
the
story,"
he
said,
shortly,
replunging
into
"Lara."

"But
I
want
the
details."

"The
things
I
make
up
about
that
damned
ship
that
you
call
a galley?
They're
quite
easy.
You
can
just
make
'em
up
yourself.
Turn up
the
gas
a
little,
I
want
to
go
on
reading."

I
could
have
broken
the
gas
globe
over
his
head
for
his
amazing stupidity.
I
could
indeed
make
up
things
for
myself
did
I
only
know what
Charlie
did
not
know
that
he
knew.
But
since
the
doors
were shut
behind
me
I
could
only
wait
his
youthful
pleasure
and
strive
to keep
him
in
good
temper.
One
minute's
want
of
guard
might
spoil
a priceless
revelation:
now
and
again
he
would
toss
his
books
aside—he kept
them
in
my
rooms,
for
his
mother
would
have
been
shocked
at the
waste
of
good
money
had
she
seen
them—and
launched
into
his sea
dreams.
Again
I
cursed
all
the
poets
of
England.
The
plastic
mind of
the
bank-clerk
had
been
overlaid,
colored
and
distorted
by
that which
he
had
read,
and
the
result
as
delivered
was
a
confused
tangle of
other
voices
most
like
the
muttered
song
through
a
City
telephone in
the
busiest
part
of
the
day.

He
talked
of
the
galley—his
own
galley
had
he
but
known
it—with illustrations
borrowed
from
the
"Bride
of
Abydos."
He
pointed
the experiences
of
his
hero
with
quotations
from
"The
Corsair,"
and threw
in
deep
and
desperate
moral
reflections
from
"Cain"
and
"Manfred,"
expecting
me
to
use
them
all.
Only
when
the
talk
turned
on Longfellow
were
the
jarring
cross-currents
dumb,
and
I
knew
that Charlie
was
speaking
the
truth
as
he
remembered
it.

"What
do
you
think
of
this?"
I
said
one
evening,
as
soon
as
I
understood
the
medium
in
which
his
memory
worked
best,
and,
before he
could
expostulate,
read
him
the
whole
of
"The
Saga
of
King
Olaf!"

He
listened
open-mouthed,
flushed,
his
hands
drumming
on
the back
of
the
sofa
where
he
lay,
till
I
came
to
the
Song
of
Einar
Tam-berskelver
and
the
verse:

"Einar
then,
the
arrow
taking From
the
loosened
string, Answered:
'That
was
Norway
breaking 'Neath
thy
hand,
O
King.'
"

He
gasped
with
pure
delight
of
sound.

"That's
better
than
Byron,
a
little,"
I
ventured. "Better?
Why
it's
true/
How
could
he
have
known?" I
went
back
and
repeated:

'What
was
that?'
said
Olaf,
standing

On
the
quarter-deck. 'Something
heard
I
like
the
stranding

Of
a
shattered
wreck.'
"

"How
could
he
have
known
how
the
ships
crash
and
the
oars
rip out
and
go
z-zzp
all
along
the
line?
Why
only
the
other
night
.
.
. But
go
back
please
and
read
'The
Skerry
of
Shrieks'
again."