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The Palazzo Amadeo is a dilapidated palace looking onto the Rio delle Beccarie; it is let in flats to the poor; and in the sea-story suite of the great, bare, dingy, gilded rooms lived Hilary and Peggy Margerison, and three disreputable infants who insisted on bathing in the canals, and the boarders. The boarders were at the moment six in number; Peter made seven.
One evening, after supper at the farmhouse, Lorimer, who for some time had been watching Philip and Thelma conversing together in low tones near the open window, rose from his seat quietly, without disturbing the hilarity of the bonde, who was in the middle of a rollicking sea-story, told for Macfarlane's entertainment, and slipped out into the garden, where he strolled along rather absently till he found himself in the little close thicket of pines, the very same spot where he and Philip had stood on the first day of their visit thither.
He laughed at the idea, as most seamen would, and the discussion ended by his promising to write a sea-story which could be read by landsmen, while seamen should feel its truth.
Week after week his was the credit of the unprecedented performance of having two books at the head of the list of best-sellers. Not only did the story take with the fiction-readers, but those who read "The Shame of the Sun" with avidity were likewise attracted to the sea-story by the cosmic grasp of mastery with which he had handled it.
The Brute, which is the only sea-story in the volume, is, like Il Conde, associated with a direct narrative and based on a suggestion gathered on warm human lips. I will not disclose the real name of the criminal ship but the first I heard of her homicidal habits was from the late Captain Blake, commanding a London ship in which I served in 1884 as Second Officer.
Sailors, indeed, had been introduced into fiction, notably by Smollett, but in no case had there been exhibited the handling and movements of vessels, and the details of naval operations. During the last half-century we have been so surfeited with the sea-story in every form, that most of us have forgotten the fact of its late origin, and that it is to Cooper that it owes its creation.
To have written our first historical novel, "The Spy," our first sea-story, "The Pilot," and to have created the Leather-Stocking series, is glory enough. In his perception of masculine character, Cooper ranks with Fielding. His sailors, his scouts and spies, his good and bad Indians, are as veritable human figures as Squire Western.
"And you are Maud Brewster," I said solemnly, gazing across at her. "And you are Humphrey Van Weyden," she said, gazing back at me with equal solemnity and awe. "How unusual! I don't understand. We surely are not to expect some wildly romantic sea-story from your sober pen." "No, I am not gathering material, I assure you," was my answer. "I have neither aptitude nor inclination for fiction."
He gave to literature the sea-story, the war-story, and the love-story stories that hinge on all the human passions, and stories of the supernatural in all its phases.
To one like him whose early life had been spent on top-gallant yards and in becketing royals, it was perfectly clear that "The Pirate" was the work of a landsman and not of a sailor. Not that he denied the accuracy of the descriptions so far as they went. He could not convince his opponents by argument. He consequently determined to convince them by writing a sea-story.
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