I can tell you, she looks a devilish fine figure of a woman.  And soon afterwards there comes from the galley the smell of bacon and eggs—­my son, if you don’t know the conglomerate smell of fried bacon and eggs, bilge water, and the salt of the pure early morning ocean, your ideas of perfume are rudimentary.  She and the Portugee between them, he contributing the science and she the good-will, give us excellent grub; of course you would turn your nose up at it—­but you’ve never been hungry in your life! and there hasn’t been a grumble in the cabin.  Maturin has offered her the permanent job.  Certainly she looks after us and attends to our comforts in a way sailor men on tramps aren’t accustomed to.  She’s a great pal of the second mate’s and at night they play spoiled-five at a corner of the table, with the greasiest pack of cards you ever saw, and she’s perfectly happy.

     “Now and again we discuss the future, without arriving at any
     result.  A day or two ago I chaffed her about marriage.  She
     considered the matter gravely.

     “’I guess I’ll have to.  I’m twenty-four.  But I haven’t had much
     luck so far, have I?’

     “I replied:  ’You won’t always strike wrong ‘uns.’

     “‘I don’t know what kind of a man I’m going to strike,’ she said. 
     ’Not any of those little billy-goats in dinner jackets I used to
     meet at Mrs. Jardine’s.  No, sirree.  And no more Ras Fendihooks!’

     “She rose—­we had been sitting on the cabin sky-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.