stake. That's why I've
come six thousand miles to warn you. Howly Mother, if I'd only the
eddication to talk so I'd be understood!

"I'm going to try another course. See here, mum. You've heered tell of
Cachalot whales. They runs say eighty tons for full whales--one hundred
fifty horse-power, dunno how many knots, full of fight to the last drop
of blood. That stands for Jesse.

"And them sperm whales is so contemptuous of the giant squid they uses
her for food. She's small along of a sperm whale, but she's mean as
eight python snakes with a devil in the middle. That'll do for Polly.

"Well, last voyage I seen one of them she-nightmares strangle a bull
Cachalot, and the sight turned me sick as a dog. Now, d'ye understand
what Polly's doing? I told you I hated Jesse. I told you straight to
your face why I hated him. And now, mum, I'm only sorry for poor Jesse."

It was then, I think, that I began really to be terrified. Never in the
old days at the ranch had Billy been off his guard even with me. Now he
let me know his very heart. I could not help but trust him, and it was
no small uneasiness which had brought the lad to England.

I had fought so hard, schooling myself to think of Jesse as of the dead,
with reverent tenderness. Little by little I had filled a bleak and
empty widowhood with mother duties, womanly service, my holy art of
song, and harmless fairies, making the best of it while age and
plainness were my destiny. But now of a sudden my poor peace was
shattered, and that gift of imagination which had imagined even
contentment, played traitor and made havoc. Laws, conventions, mean
respectabilities, seemed only cobwebs now. Love swept them all away, and
nothing mattered. Jesse! Jesse!

"Them devil-squids," he was saying, "has a habit of throwing out ink to
fog the water, so you won't see what they're up to until they lash out
to grapple. That's where they're so like this Polly. She's a fat,
hearty, good-natured body, and it's the surest fact she's kind to men
in trouble. Anybody can have a drink, a meal and a bed, no matter how
broke he is; and Spite House is free hospital for the district. She'll
sit up nights nursing a sick man, and, till I went an' lived there, I'd
have sworn she was good as they make 'em. That's the ink.

"Then you begins to find out, and what I didn't see, mother would tell
me. She'd been three years there. Besides, I seen most of what we calls
sailor towns, and I'd thought I'd known