“But in a little time we shall run out of the portholes as the water runs along the oarblade, and though you tell the others to row after us you will never catch us till you catch the oar-thresh and tie up the winds in the belly of the sail. Aho! “Will you never let us go?”
“H'm. What's oar-thresh, Charlie?”
“The water washed up by the oars. That's the sort of song they might sing in the galley, y'know. Aren't you ever going to finish that story and give me some of the profits?”
“It depends on yourself. If you had only told me more about your hero in the first instance it might have been finished by now. You're so hazy in your notions.”
“I only want to give you the general notion of it—the knocking about from place to place and the fighting and all that. Can't you fill in the rest yourself? Make the hero save a girl on a pirate-galley and marry her or do something.”
“You're a really helpful collaborator. I suppose the hero went through some few adventures before he married.”
“Well then, make him a very artful card—a low sort of man—a sort of political man who went about making treaties and breaking them—a black-haired chap who hid behind the mast when the fighting began.”
“But you said the other day that he was red-haired.”
“I couldn't have. Make him black-haired of course. You've no imagination.”
Seeing that I had just discovered the entire principles upon which the half-memory falsely called imagination is based, I felt entitled to laugh, but forbore, for the sake of the tale.