rowers. They choked him to death against the side of the
ship with their chained hands quite quietly, and it was too dark for the
other overseer to see what had happened. When he asked, he was pulled
down too and choked, and the lower deck fought their way up deck by
deck, with the pieces of the broken benches banging behind 'em. How they
howled!"

"And what happened after that?"

"I don't know. The hero went away--red hair and red beard and all. That
was after he had captured our galley, I think."

The sound of my voice irritated him, and he motioned slightly with his
left hand as a man does when interruption jars.

"You never told me he was redheaded before, or that he captured your
galley," I said, after a discreet interval.

Charlie did not raise his eyes.

"He was as red as a red bear," said he, abstractedly. "He came from the
north; they said so in the galley when he looked for rowers--not slaves,
but free men. Afterward--years and years afterward--news came from
another ship, or else he came back----" His lips moved in silence. He
was rapturously retasting some poem before him.

"Where had he been, then?" I was almost whispering that the sentence
might come gentle to whichever section of Charlie's brain was working on
my behalf.

"To the Beaches--the Long and Wonderful Beaches!" was the reply, after a
minute of silence.

"To Furdurstrandi?" I asked, tingling from head to foot.

"Yes, to Furdurstrandi," he pronounced the word in a new fashion "And I
too saw----" The voice failed.

"Do you know what you have said?" I shouted, incautiously.

He lifted his eyes, fully roused now. "No!" he snapped. "I wish you'd
let a chap go on reading. Hark to this:

"'But Othere, the old sea captain,
He neither paused nor stirred
Till the king listened, and then
'Once more took up his pen
And wrote down every word.

"'And to the King of the Saxons
In witness of the truth,
Raising his noble head,
He stretched his brown hand and said,
"Behold this walrus tooth."

By Jove, what chaps those must have been, to go sailing all over the
shop never knowing where they'd fetch the land! Hah!"

"Charlie," I pleaded, "if you'll only be sensible for a minute or two
I'll make our hero in our tale every inch as good as Othere."

"Umph! Longfellow wrote that poem. I don't care about writing things
any more. I want to read." He was thoroughly out of tune now, and raging
over my own ill-luck, I l