“Tell? You?” said Pyecroft. Neither man’s lips moved, and the words were whispers: “Your ultimate illegitimate grandchildren might begin to understand, not you—nor ever will.”
“Captain Malan’s galley away, Sir,” cried a voice above; and one replied: “Then get those two greasers into their dinghy and hoist the blue peter. We’re out of action.”
“Can you do it, Sir?” said Pyecroft at the foot of the ladder. “Do you think it is in the English language, or do you not?”
“I don’t think I can, but I’ll try. If it takes me two years, I’ll try.”
There are witnesses who can testify that I have used no artifice. I have, on the contrary, cut away priceless slabs of opus alexandrinum. My gold I have lacquered down to dull bronze, my purples overlaid with sepia of the sea, and for hell-hearted ruby and blinding diamond I have substituted pale amethyst and mere jargoon. Because I would say again “Disregarding the inventions of the Marine Captain whose other name is Gubbins, let a plain statement suffice.”
THE COMPREHENSION OF PRIVATE COPPER
THE KING’S TASK
After the sack of the City, when Rome was sunk to a name,
In the years when the Lights were darkened, or ever Saint Wilfrid came.
Low on the borders of Britain, the ancient poets sing,
Between the cliff and the forest there ruled a Saxon king.
Stubborn all were his people, a stark and a jealous horde—
Not to be schooled by the cudgel, scarce to be cowed by the sword;
Blithe to turn at their pleasure, bitter to cross in their mood,
And set on the ways of their choosing as the hogs of Andred’s Wood …
They made them laws in the Witan, the laws of flaying and fine,
Folkland, common and pannage, the theft and the track of kine;
Statutes of tun and of market for the fish and the malt and the meal,
The tax on the Bramber packhorse and the tax on the Hastings keel.
Over the graves of the Druids and over the wreck of Rome
Rudely but deeply they bedded the plinth of the days to come.
Behind the feet of the Legions and before the Northman’s ire,
Rudely but greatly begat they the body of state and of shire.
Rudely but greatly they laboured, and their labour stands till now
If we trace on our ancient headlands the twist of their eight-ox plough.