Hell's Hatches

the gifted Franco-American painter whose brilliant South Sea marines have taken the Australian art world by storm"-and now that it was definitely reported that he had left Brisbane on his way to conne

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e only living person who knew he was not the hero of the astonishing Cora Andrews affair, the audacious daring and almost sublime courage characterizing which had touched the imagination of the whole world; that, far from having volunteered to navigate a shipload of plague-stricken blacks through some hundreds o

chopped open the hatches they had been battened under ever since the Cora's officers had succumbed who knows how many hours before); but, even so, their rolling, bloodshot eyes could have fixed on nothing to have led them to believe that the greasy shaw

shing refurnishing her George Street flat-which, cumulatively, had been responsible for his being packed off to "The Islands," was already assured, and it looked as though more was to come-that his "spectacular and self-sacrificing heroism" was going to wipe out the unpleasant memories that had barred him from sporting and social circles even before the law stepped in. A sporting writer in that morning's Herald had speculated as to whether or not he would be seen again riding "Number 1" for the unbeaten "Boomerang" Four, with whom he had qualified for his handicap of "8," still standing as the highest ever given an Australian polo player; and the racing

h he had cut across Polynesia, had ever dreamed he could be, and, on the other hand, an Allen who might easily become more the idol of sporting (which is, of course, the real) Australia than he had ever been at the zenith of his meteoric career as a turfman and athlet

move calculated to impose both immediate and eventual silence upon me. If we were still "north of twenty-two" I would have had no doubt what form that "move" would take, and even here in the heart of the Antipodean metropolis-well, that I was leaving no unnecessary loop-holes of attack open was attested by the fact that I was awaiting his coming wearing a roomy old shooting jacket, in the

before he went under Jackson's table as a consequence of trying to toss off three-fingers of "Three Star" for every man he claimed to have killed. Moreover, I had a sort of a feeling that old Bell would have liked to have seen his score evened up that way, for he, more than almost anyone I could recall, had marvelled at what he called the tricks I had tucked away in my "starboard trigger pocket." But-I may as well own it-my principal reason for hoping for a decisive showdown straightaway was that I felt sure I coul

about my natural self-just about at the turn of the tide between weakness and strength-for three or four hours; but from about three to five, when the renewed cravings began to stir and it had long been my custom to pour my first thin trickle of green into the cracked ice, I was preternaturally alive in hand and brain. The rigorous restriction of my painting to these brief hours of physical and spiritual exaltation must share with my colours the credit for the fact that I had already done work that was to win me a nich

ration for the fact "that the hero" (as the Herald had it) was "still far from recovered from the terrible hardships he had endured as a consequence of his unparalleled self-sacrifice," the remainder of the day was to

that hour should be brought straight to my rooms without further question. I also 'phoned Lady X-- and begged off from showing her and a party of friends from Government House my pictures at four, as I had promised a couple of days previously. Being borne off to the inevitable and interminable Australian afternoon teas-or to anything else I could not easily shake myself free from very shortly after five-was one of the worst ordeals incident to the spell of lionizing that had set in for me from the day of my arrival in Sydney. What did I care for Sydney, anyhow? Paris was my go

sing minutes) I began daubing pigments upon a rough rectangle of blotched canvas on an easel in the embrasure of the windows, might have adjusted the hair-spring of my wrist-watch, and the beat of my heart was slow and strong and steady like the throb of the engines of a liner in mid-ocean. If either hand or nerve inc

d them from time to time, carefully noting the gradations of colour-ranging from soft fawn to scintillant saffron-as the more indurated particles stood out the longer against the friction of the pestle. At this time, I might explain, I was in the tentative stage of my experimentation to evolve and perfect a greater variety of media than had hitherto been available with which to express in colour the interminable moods of sea and sky and sunshine. The value of my contribution to art-not yet complete after f