THE COMPLETE NOVELS OF RUDYARD KIPLING (Illustrated Edition). Rudyard Kipling
turned the other way—to the Ushant light, for instance," said the Nilghai.
"Flinging his arms about like a mad windmill," said Torpenhow. "Give us something else, Nilghai. You're in fine fog-horn form tonight."
"Give us the 'Ganges Pilot'; you sang that in the square the night before El-Maghrib. By the way, I wonder how many of the chorus are alive tonight," said Dick.
Torpenhow considered for a minute. "By Jove! I believe only you and I. Raynor, Vicery, and Deenes—all dead; Vincent caught smallpox in Cairo, carried it here and died of it. Yes, only you and I and the Nilghai."
"Umph! And yet the men here who've done their work in a well-warmed studio all their lives, with a policeman at each corner, say that I charge too much for my pictures."
"They are buying your work, not your insurance policies, dear child," said the Nilghai.
"I gambled with one to get at the other. Don't preach. Go on with the 'Pilot.' Where in the world did you get that song?"
"On a tombstone," said the Nilghai. "On a tombstone in a distant land. I made it an accompaniment with heaps of base chords."
"Oh, Vanity! Begin." And the Nilghai began—
"I have slipped my cable, messmates, I'm drifting down with the tide, I have my sailing orders, while yet at anchor ride. And never on fair June morning have I put out to sea With clearer conscience or better hope, or a heart more light and free.
"Shoulder to shoulder, Joe, my boy, into the crowd like a wedge. Strike with the hangers, messmates, but do not cut with the edge." Cries Charnock, "Scatter the faggots, double that Brahmin in two, The tall pale widow for me, Joe, the little brown girl for you!"
"Young Joe (you're nearing sixty), why is your hide so dark? Katie has soft fair blue eyes, who blackened yours?—Why, hark!"
They were all singing now, Dick with the roar of the wind of the open sea about his ears as the deep bass voice let itself go.
"The morning gun—Ho, steady! the arquebuses to me! I ha' sounded the Dutch High Admiral's heart as my lead doth sound the sea.
"Sounding, sounding the Ganges, floating down with the tide, Moore me close to Charnock, next to my nut-brown bride. My blessing to Kate at Fairlight—Holwell, my thanks to you; Steady! We steer for heaven, through sand-drifts cold and blue."
"Now what is there in that nonsense to make a man restless?" said Dick, hauling Binkie from his feet to his chest.
"It depends on the man," said Torpenhow.
"The man who has been down to look at the sea," said the Nilghai.
"I didn't know she was going to upset me in this fashion."
"That's what men say when they go to say good-bye to a woman. It's more easy though to get rid of three women than a piece of one's life and surroundings."
"But a woman can be——" began Dick, unguardedly.
"A piece of one's life," continued Torpenhow. "No, she can't." His face darkened for a moment. "She says she wants to sympathise with you and help you in your work, and everything else that clearly a man must do for himself. Then she sends round five notes a day to ask why the dickens you haven't been wasting your time with her."
"Don't generalise," said the Nilghai. "By the time you arrive at five notes a day you must have gone through a good deal and behaved accordingly. Shouldn't begin these things, my son."
"I shouldn't have gone down to the sea," said Dick, just a little anxious to change the conversation. "And you shouldn't have sung."
"The sea isn't sending you five notes a day," said the Nilghai.
"No, but I'm fatally compromised. She's an enduring old hag, and I'm sorry I ever met her. Why wasn't I born and bred and dead in a three-pair back?"
"Hear him blaspheming his first love! Why in the world shouldn't you listen to her?" said Torpenhow.
Before Dick could reply the Nilghai lifted up his voice with a shout that shook the windows, in "The Men of the Sea," that begins, as all know, "The sea is a wicked old woman," and after wading through eight lines whose imagery is truthful, ends in a refrain, slow as the clacking of a capstan when the boat comes unwillingly up to the bars where the men sweat and tramp in the shingle.
"'Ye that bore us, O restore us! She is kinder than ye; For the call is on our heart-strings!' Said The Men of the Sea."
The Nilghai sang that verse twice, with simple cunning, intending that Dick should hear. But Dick was waiting for the farewell of the men to their wives.
"'Ye that love us, can ye move us? She is dearer than ye; And your sleep will be the sweeter,' Said The Men of the Sea."
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."
"That was months ago, and I only objected to your making money for travelling expenses. You've shot your bolt here and it has gone home. Go away and do some work, and see some things."
"Get some of the fat off you; you're disgracefully out of condition," said the Nilghai, making a plunge from the chair and grasping a handful of Dick generally over the right ribs. "Soft as putty—pure tallow born of over-feeding. Train it off, Dickie."
"We're all equally gross, Nilghai. Next time you have to take the field you'll sit down, wink your eyes, gasp, and die in a fit."
"Never mind. You go away on a ship. Go to Lima again, or to Brazil. There's always trouble in South America."
"Do you suppose I want to be told where to go? Great Heavens, the only difficulty is to know where I'm to stop. But I shall stay here, as I told you before."
"Then you'll be buried in Kensal Green and turn into adipocere with the others," said Torpenhow. "Are you thinking of commissions in hand? Pay forfeit and go. You've money enough to travel as a king if you please."
"You've the grisliest notions of amusement, Torp. I think I see myself shipping first class on a six-thousand-ton hotel, and asking the third engineer what makes the engines go round, and whether it isn't very warm in the stokehold. Ho! ho! I should ship as a loafer if ever I shipped at all, which I'm not going to do. I shall compromise, and go for a small trip to begin with."
"That's something at any rate. Where will you go?" said Torpenhow. "It would do you all the good in the world, old man."
The Nilghai saw the twinkle in Dick's eye, and refrained from speech.
"I shall go in the first place to Rathray's stable, where I shall hire one horse, and take him very carefully as far as Richmond Hill. Then I shall walk him back again, in case he should accidentally burst into a lather and make Rathray angry. I shall do that tomorrow, for the sake of air and exercise."
"Bah!" Dick had barely