years at work on them. The service was composed of Brittany china, Spanish peasant porcelain, and a gay Hungarian pottery, painted with brilliant flowers. It had been Campaspe's satisfied desire that no two cups or plates should be identical. On the wall a brass ship's-clock ticked out the time, sounding bells in lieu of hours, and lanterns, burning sperm oil, which had formerly served to illuminate the cabins of old whaling vessels, hung from the ceilings. The doors, with their oval tops, together with the rest of the woodwork, like the shingles on the roof, were oiled but unpolished.
To Harold, satiated with what he regarded as an exotic and artificial atmosphere, this pseudo-communion with a more natural environment, which, in a sense, reminded him of his boyhood, his Aunt Sadi and Persia Blaine, seemed heavenly. He took long walks on the spar-strewn dunes and, clad in tarpaulins, went fishing for founders in a decaying boat, rowed to a suitable depth by a weather-beaten tar, who told him venerable yarns of the old leviathan hunts, and more recent scandals of the New England village. Occasionally, with Alice, he went for a sail, the veteran mariner guiding the helm and calling out to Harold incomprehensible nautical directions (subsequently translated) for handling the canvas of the sloop, a sorry affair smelling of dead fish. The sickly aroma of dead fish, indeed, haunted the nostrils and never entirely passed away, just as the dampness penetrated even the heavy cedar
