Page:Angels of Mons second edition.pdf/119

 "Well, it's like this. 'Struck the wine-dark sea with our oars,' their sergeant, or whatever they call him, says to me, and a minute or two ago when that cloud came over and the sea got dark that brought that man and his queer way of talking back to my mind. So it is, I said to myself, and I've drunk wine just that colour at Marseilles down in the View Port, and not bad drink either if you get enough of it."

The chaplain was no longer the patient listener. He started as a terrier starts when he suspects rats at hand, and he said:

"What did the native call the sea?"

"The wine-dark sea, as I told you, sir—just his silly way of talking. You know, a lot of them natives can talk English of a sort, pidgin-English and all sorts of funny patter, but you can make out what they mean. This