-light--and leaned
over the taffrail and looked wistfully out to sea. I joined her.
She was silent for a bit. Then she said:

"'I guess I'm not going to marry at all; for I'm not going to marry
a man I don't love, and I couldn't love a man who couldn't beat
me--and there ain't many. That's the kind of fool way I'm built.'

"She turned and left me. I suppose she meant it. Liosha doesn't
talk through her hat. But if she ever does fall in love with a man
who can beat her, there'll be the devil to pay. Liosha in love
would be a tornado of a spectacle. But I shouldn't like it.
Honest--I shouldn't like it. I've got so used to this clean great
Amazon of a Liosha, that I should loathe the fellow were he as
decent a sort as you please."

It is curious to observe how, as the voyage proceeded, Jaffery's horizon
gradually narrowed to the small shipboard circle, just as an invalid's
interests become circumscribed by the walls of his sick-room. He tells
us of childish things, a catch of fish, a quarrel between the first and
second mate over Liosha, second having accused first of a disrespectful
attitude towards the lady, the sail-cloth screen rigged up aft behind
which Liosha had her morning tub of sea-water, the stubbing of Liosha's
toe and her temporary lameness, the illness of the Portugee cook and
Liosha's supremacy in the galley. And he wrote it all with the air of
the impresario vaunting the qualities of his prima donna, nay more--with
a fatuous air of proprietorship, as though he himself had created
Liosha.

Here is the beginning of another letter, addressed to us both:

"A thousand thanks, dearest people, for what you tell me of Doria.
If she just misses me a little bit, all may be well. I've bought
some jolly gold barbaric ornaments that she may accept when I reach
home; and do try to persuade her that the poor old bear is rough
only on the outside.

"Things going on just as usual. Liosha has got a monkey given her
by the donkey-man. . . ."

There follows a description of the monkey and its antics, and a long
account of a chase all over the ship, in which all the ship's company
including the captain took part, to the subversion of discipline and
navigation. But you see--he switches off at once to Liosha and the
trivial records of the humdrum day.

At last he had something less trivial to write about. They were in the
Moza