I got together and placed on one file all my notes; and the net
result was not cheering. I read them a second time. There was
nothing that might not have been compiled at second-hand from
other people's books--except, perhaps, the story of the fight in the
harbor. The adventures of a Viking had been written many times
before; the history of a Greek galley-slave was no new thing, and
though I wrote both, who could challenge or confirm the accuracy
of my details? I might as well tell a tale of two thousand years
hence. The Lords of Life and Death were as cunning as Grish
Chunder had hinted. They would allow nothing to escape that
might trouble or make easy the minds of men. Though I was
convinced of this, yet I could not leave the tale alone. Exaltation
followed reaction, not once, but twenty times in the next few
weeks. My moods varied with the March sunlight and flying
clouds. By night or in the beauty of a spring morning I perceived
that I could write that tale and shift continents thereby. In the wet,
windy afternoons, I saw that the tale might indeed be written, but
would be nothing more than a faked, false-varnished, sham-rusted
piece of Wardour Street work at the end.
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