“She and the sea between them—immensely. There was a heap of bad drawing in that picture. I remember I went out of my way to foreshorten for sheer delight of doing it, and I foreshortened damnably, but for all that it’s the best thing I’ve ever done; and now I suppose the ship’s broken up or gone down. Whew! What a time that was!”
“What happened after all?”
“It all ended. They were loading her with wool when I left the ship, but even the stevedores kept the picture clear to the last. The eyes of the demons scared them, I honestly believe.”
“And the woman?”
“She was scared too when it was finished. She used to cross herself before she went down to look at it. Just three colours and no chance of getting any more, and the sea outside and unlimited love-making inside, and the fear of death atop of everything else, O Lord!” He had ceased to look at the sketch, but was staring straight in front of him across the room.
“Why don’t you try something of the same kind now?” said the Nilghai.
“Because those things come not by fasting and prayer. When I find a cargo-boat and a Jewess-Cuban and another notion and the same old life, I may.”
“You won’t find them here,” said the Nilghai.
“No, I shall not.” Dick shut the sketch-book with a bang. “This room’s as hot as an oven. Open the window, some one.”
He leaned into the darkness, watching the greater darkness of London below him. The chambers stood much higher than the other houses, commanding a hundred chimneys—crooked cowls that looked like sitting cats as they swung round, and other uncouth brick and zinc mysteries supported by iron stanchions and clamped by 8-pieces. Northward the lights of Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square threw a copper-coloured glare above the black roofs, and southward by all the orderly lights of the Thames. A train rolled out across one of the railway bridges, and its thunder drowned for a minute the dull roar of the streets. The Nilghai looked at his watch and said shortly, “That’s the Paris night-mail. You can book from here to St. Petersburg if you choose.”