he
Bourbons.' That's the way two writers headed their articles about 'The
Black Brig.' And a third said that I must be getting tired; I wrote as
if I was. THAT fellow was right. I am tired, Jim. I'm tired and sick
of writing slush. I can't write any more of it. And yet I can't write
anything else."

Jim's pipe had gone out. Now he relit it and tossed the match over the
veranda rail.

"How do you know you can't?" he demanded.

"Can't what?"

"Can't write anything but slush?"

"Ah ha! Then it is slush. You admit it."

"I don't admit anything of the kind. You may not be a William
Shakespeare or even a George Meredith, but you have written some mighty
interesting stories. Why, I know a chap who sits up till morning to
finish a book of yours. Can't sleep until he has finished it."

"What's the matter with him; insomnia?"

"No; he's a night watchman. Does that satisfy you, you crossgrained
old shellfish? Come on, let's dig clams--some of your own blood
relations--and forget it."

"I don't want to forget it and there is plenty of time for clamming. The
tide won't cover the flats for two hours yet. I tell you I'm serious,
Jim. I can't write any more. I know it. The stuff I've been writing
makes me sick. I hate it, I tell you. What the devil I'm going to do for
a living I can't see--but I can't write another story."

Jim put his pipe in his pocket. I think at last he was convinced that I
meant what I said, which I certainly did. The last year had been a year
of torment to me. I had finished the 'Brig,' as a matter of duty, but if
that piratical craft had sunk with all hands, including its creator, I
should not have cared. I drove myself to my desk each day, as a horse
might be driven to a treadmill, but the animal could have taken no less
interest in his work than I had taken in mine. It was bad--bad--bad;
worthless and hateful. There wasn't a new idea in it and I hadn't one
in my head. I, who had taken up writing as a last resort, a gamble which
might, on a hundred-to-one chance, win where everything else had failed,
had now reached the point where that had failed, too. Campbell's surmise
was correct; with the pretence of asking him to the Cape for a
week-end of fishing and sailing I had lured him there to tell him of my
discouragement and my determination to quit.

He took his feet from the rail and hitched his chair about until he
faced me.

"So you're not going to write any more," he said.

"I'm not. I can'