118 The Light That Failed let the bearings cool down, and wonder whether the crack in the shaft was spreading.” “Were you a steward or a stoker in those days?” “T was flush for the time being, so I was a passenger, or else I should have been a steward, I think,” said Dick, with perfect gravity, returning to the procession of angry wives. “I was the only other passenger from Lima, and the ship was half empty, and full of rats and cockroaches and scorpions.” “But what has this to do with the picture?” “Wait a minute. She had been in the China passenger trade and her lower decks had bunks for two thousand pigtails. Those were all taken down, and she was empty up to her nose, and the lights came through the port holes — most annoying lights to work in till you got used to them. I hadn’t anything to do for weeks. The ship’s charts were in pieces and our skipper daren’t run south for fear of catching a storm. So he did his best to knock all the Society Islands out of the water one by one, and I went into the lower deck, and did my picture on the port side as far forward in her as I could go. There was some brown paint and some green paint that they used for the boats, and some black paint for ironwork, and that was all I had.” “The passengers must have thought you mad.” “There was only one, and it was a woman; but it gave me the notion of my picture.” “What was she like?” said Torpenhow. “She was a sort of Negroid-Jewess-Cuban; with morals to match. She couldn’t read or write, and she didn’t want to, but she used to come down and watch me paint, and the skipper didn’t like it, because he was paying her passage and had to be on the bridge occasionally.” “I see. That must have been cheerful.” “It was the best time I ever had. To begin with, we