nter into the details.

"Yes, that's all right enough," said Stapleton, who had taken advantage
of my reading to smoke furiously, to make up for lost time; "but no good
came of it, for one of the gemmen took a fancy to your mother, Mary, and
tried to win her away from me. I found him attempting to kiss her, and
she refusing him--but laughing, and, as I thought, more than
half-willing; so I floored him, and put him out of the house, and after
that I never would have anything more to say with lords and gemmen, nor
with fighting either. I built a new wherry, and stuck to the river, and
I shifted my lodgings that I mightn't mix any more with those who knew
me as a boxer. Your mother was then brought to bed with you, and I
hoped for a good deal of happiness, as I thought she would only think of
her husband and child; and so she did until you were weaned, and then
she went on just as afore. There was a captain of a vessel lying in the
river, who used now and then to stop and talk with her; but I thought
little about that, seeing how every one talked with her and she with
everybody; and besides, she knew the captain's wife, who was a very
pretty woman, and used very often to ask Mary to go and see her, which I
permitted. But one morning, when I was going off to the boat--for he
had come down to me to take him to his vessel--just as I was walking
away with the sculls over my shoulder, I recollects my 'baccy box, which
I had left, and I goes back and hears him say before I came into the
door--`Recollect, I shall be here again by two o'clock, and then you
promised to come on board my ship, and see--.' I didn't hear the rest,
but she laughed and said yes, she would. I didn't show myself, but
walked away and went to the boat. He followed me, and I rowed him up
the river and took my fare--and then I determined to watch them, for I
felt mighty jealous. So I lays off on my oars in the middle of the
stream, and sure enough I see the captain and your mother get into a
small skiff belonging to his ship, and pull away; the captain had one
oar and one of his men another. I pulled a'ter them as fast as I could,
and at last they seed me; and not wishing me to find her out, she begged
them to pull away as fast as they could, for she knew how savage I would
be. Still I gained upon them, every now and then looking round and
vowing vengeance in my heart, when all of a sudden I heard a scream, and
perceived their boat to capsize, and al