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By Root 10357 0

This scientist Basteshaw! Why, he was cuckoo! Why, we'd both have rotted in that African sea, and the boat would have rotted, and there would have been nothing but death and mad ideas to the last. Or he'd have murdered and eaten me, still calm and utterly reasonable, and gone on steering to his goal. Anyway, they dragged us aboard, both in a bad way. Naples was the first port this Limey ship made. There the authorities stuck us in a hospital. And it was a few weeks before I was afoot again, and I met Basteshaw in the corridor in a bathrobe, coming along slowly. He seemed himself again, confident and proud-headed. But he was de512 cidedly cool to me. I could see he was blaming me for frustrating his great plan. Now he'd have to ship again. No Canaries. His research, so essential to human survival itself--that was no small thing to postpone. "Do you realize," I said, driving it home, still indignant at what might have happened, "that you missed, you great navigator? I might never have seen my wife again if I had listened to you." He heard me out and meanwhile took my measure. He said, "The power of an individual to act through his intellect on the reason of mankind is smaller now than ever." "Go ahead! Save mankind!" I said. "But don't forget if you had your way you'd be dead now." He wouldn't talk to me after that, and I didn't care. We snubbed each other in the corridor. All I thought about was Stella anyhow. It was six months before I saw New York again, for they found ona reason after another to detain me at the hospital. So it was a night in September when the taxi let me off at Stella's door, which now also was mine, and she came running down the stairs to me.

CHAPTER XXVI

If I could have come back and started to lead a happy, peaceful life I think very few people would have the right to complain that I wasn't ready yet or hadn't paid the admission price that's set by whoever sets prices. Guys like the broken-down Cossack of the Mexican mountains and other spokesmen would at least have to agree that I had a breather coming. Nevertheless I have had almost none. It probably is too much to ask. I said when I started to make the record that I would be plain and heed the knocks as they came, and also that a man's character was his fate. Well, then it is obvious that this fate, or what he settles for, is also his character. And since I never have had any place of rest, it should follow that I have trouble being still, and furthermore my hope is based upon getting to be still so that the axial lines can be found. When striving stops, the truth comes as a gift--bounty, harmony, love, and so forth. Maybe I can't take these very things I want. Once I said to Mintouchian when we were discussing this, "Wherever I stay it has always been on somebody's hospitality. First on old Grandma--it was really her house. Then those people in Evanston, the Renlings, then this Casa Descuitada in Mexico, and with Mr. Paslavitch the Yugoslavian." "Some people,. if they didn't make it hard for themselves, might fall asleep," said Mintouchian. "Even the Son of Man made it hard so He would have enough in common with our race to be its God." "I had this idea of an academy foster-home or something like that." "It could never work. Excuse me, but it's a ridiculous idea. Of course some ridiculous ideas do work, but yours wouldn't, having so many children to take care of. You're not the type, and Stella even less." "Oh, I know it was a goofy idea that I should educate children. Who am I to educate anybody? It wasn't so much education as love. That was the idea. What I wanted was to have somebody living with me for a change, instead of the other way around." I always denied that I was the only creature of my kind. But how seldom two imaginations coincide! That's because they are ambitious imaginations, both. If they meant to be satisfied, then they would coincide. I saw one thing and Stella another when we thought about matters like this academy and foster-home. What I had in my mind was this private green place like one of those Walden or Innisfree wattle