other lights, set fire to a Fatima, sat down, wriggled my spine comfortably into the chair’s padding, picked up one of the books, and prepared to make a night of it.
The book was called The Lord of the Sea , and had to do with a strong, tough and violent fellow named Hogarth, whose modest plan was to hold the world in one hand. There were plots and counterplots, kidnappings, murders, prison-breakings, forgeries and burglaries, diamonds large as hats and floating forts larger than Couffignal. It sounds dizzy here, but in the book it was as real as a dime.
Hogarth was still going strong when the lights went out.