The Light That Failed Part 20

d.i.c.k crammed head and shoulders out of the window and looked across the river. Torpenhow came to his side, while the Nilghai pa.s.sed over quietly to the piano and opened it. Binkie, making himself as large as possible, spread out upon the sofa with the air of one who is not to be lightly disturbed.

'Well,' said the Nilghai to the two pairs of shoulders, 'have you never seen this place before?'

A steam-tug on the river hooted as she towed her barges to wharf. Then the boom of the traffic came into the room. Torpenhow nudged d.i.c.k.

'Good place to bank in--bad place to bunk in, d.i.c.kie, isn't it?'

d.i.c.k's chin was in his hand as he answered, in the words of a general not without fame, still looking out on the darkness--'"My G.o.d, what a city to loot!"'

Binkie found the night air tickling his whiskers and sneezed plaintively.

'We shall give the Binkie-dog a cold,' said Torpenhow. 'Come in,' and they withdrew their heads. 'You'll be buried in Kensal Green, d.i.c.k, one of these days, if it isn't closed by the time you want to go there--buried within two feet of some one else, his wife and his family.'

'Allah forbid! I shall get away before that time comes. Give a man room to stretch his legs, Mr. Binkie.' d.i.c.k flung himself down on the sofa and tweaked Binkie's velvet ears, yawning heavily the while.

'You'll find that wardrobe-case very much out of tune,' Torpenhow said to the Nilghai. 'It's never touched except by you.'

'A piece of gross extravagance,' d.i.c.k grunted. 'The Nilghai only comes when I'm out.'

'That's because you're always out. Howl, Nilghai, and let him hear.'

'The life of the Nilghai is fraud and slaughter, His writings are watered d.i.c.kens and water; But the voice of the Nilghai raised on high Makes even the Mahdieh glad to die!'

d.i.c.k quoted from Torpenhow's letterpress in the Nungapunga Book.

'How do they call moose in Canada, Nilghai?'

The man laughed. Singing was his one polite accomplishment, as many Press-tents in far-off lands had known.

'What shall I sing?' said he, turning in the chair.

'"Moll Roe in the Morning,"' said Torpenhow, at a venture.

'No,' said d.i.c.k, sharply, and the Nilghai opened his eyes. The old chanty whereof he, among a very few, possessed all the words was not a pretty one, but d.i.c.k had heard it many times before without wincing.

Without prelude he launched into that stately tune that calls together and troubles the hearts of the gipsies of the sea--

'Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies, Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain.'

d.i.c.k turned uneasily on the sofa, for he could hear the bows of the Barralong crashing into the green seas on her way to the Southern Cross.

Then came the chorus--

'We'll rant and we'll roar like true British sailors, We'll rant and we'll roar across the salt seas, Until we take soundings in the Channel of Old England From Ushant to Scilly 'tis forty-five leagues.'

'Thirty-five-thirty-five,' said d.i.c.k, petulantly. 'Don't tamper with Holy Writ. Go on, Nilghai.'

'The first land we made it was called the Deadman,' and they sang to the end very vigourously.

'That would be a better song if her head were turned the other way--to the Ushant light, for instance,' said the Nilghai.

'Flinging his arms about like a mad windmill,' said Torpenhow. 'Give us something else, Nilghai. You're in fine fog-horn form tonight.'

'Give us the "Ganges Pilot"; you sang that in the square the night before El-Maghrib. By the way, I wonder how many of the chorus are alive to-night,' said d.i.c.k.

Torpenhow considered for a minute. 'By Jove! I believe only you and I.

Raynor, Vicery, and Deenes--all dead; Vincent caught smallpox in Cairo, carried it here and died of it. Yes, only you and I and the Nilghai.'

'Umph! And yet the men here who've done their work in a well-warmed studio all their lives, with a policeman at each corner, say that I charge too much for my pictures.'

'They are buying your work, not your insurance policies, dear child,'

said the Nilghai.

'I gambled with one to get at the other. Don't preach. Go on with the "Pilot." Where in the world did you get that song?'

'On a tombstone,' said the Nilghai. 'On a tombstone in a distant land. I made it an accompaniment with heaps of base chords.'

'Oh, Vanity! Begin.' And the Nilghai began--

'I have slipped my cable, messmates, I'm drifting down with the tide, I have my sailing orders, while yet an anchor ride.

And never on fair June morning have I put out to sea With clearer conscience or better hope, or a heart more light and free.

'Shoulder to shoulder, Joe, my boy, into the crowd like a wedge Strike with the hangers, messmates, but do not cut with the edge.

Cries Charnock, "Scatter the f.a.ggots, double that Brahmin in two, The tall pale widow for me, Joe, the little brown girl for you!"

'Young Joe (you're nearing sixty), why is your hide so dark? Katie has soft fair blue eyes, who blackened yours?--Why, hark!'

They were all singing now, d.i.c.k with the roar of the wind of the open sea about his ears as the deep ba.s.s voice let itself go.

'The morning gun-- Ho, steady! the arquebuses to me!

I ha' sounded the Dutch High Admiral's heart As my lead doth sound the sea.

'Sounding, sounding the Ganges, floating down with the tide, Moore me close to Charnock, next to my nut-brown bride.

My blessing to Kate at Fairlight--Holwell, my thanks to you; Steady! We steer for heaven, through sand-drifts cold and blue.'

'Now what is there in that nonsense to make a man restless?' said d.i.c.k, hauling Binkie from his feet to his chest.

'It depends on the man,' said Torpenhow.

'The man who has been down to look at the sea,' said the Nilghai.

'I didn't know she was going to upset me in this fashion.'

'That's what men say when they go to say good-bye to a woman. It's more easy though to get rid of three women than a piece of one's life and surroundings.'

'But a woman can be----' began d.i.c.k, unguardedly.