quotes_mears.htm



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‘The moving galley’s bow was plunking them back through their own oar-holes, and I could hear no end of a shindy in the decks below. Then her nose caught us nearly in the middle, and we tilted sideways, and the fellows in the right-hand galley unhitched their hooks and ropes, and threw things on to our upper deck—arrows, and hot pitch or something that stung, and we went up and up and up on the left side, and the right side dipped, and I twisted my head round and saw the water stand still as it topped the right bulwarks, and then it curled over and crashed down on the whole lot of us on the right side, and I felt it hit my back, and I woke.’

  

This is from “The Finect Story in theWorld” in Many Inventions.

Charlie Mears, a young London bank clerk, has been dreaming of – or remembering – a past life, in which he was a galley-slave in ancient times.