ht--a TRUE account, mind you, with nothing added and nothing taken
off. I know so much already that if you go one inch off the straight,
I'll blow this police whistle from my window and the affair goes out of
my hands forever."

The sailor thought for a little. Then he struck his leg with his great
sunburned hand.

"I'll chance it," he cried. "I believe you are a man of your word, and
a white man, and I'll tell you the whole story. But one thing I will say
first. So far as I am concerned, I regret nothing and I fear nothing,
and I would do it all again and be proud of the job. Damn the beast, if
he had as many lives as a cat, he would owe them all to me! But it's
the lady, Mary--Mary Fraser--for never will I call her by that accursed
name. When I think of getting her into trouble, I who would give my life
just to bring one smile to her dear face, it's that that turns my soul
into water. And yet--and yet--what less could I do? I'll tell you my
story, gentlemen, and then I'll ask you, as man to man, what less could
I do?

"I must go back a bit. You seem to know everything, so I expect that you
know that I met her when she was a passenger and I was first officer of
the ROCK OF GIBRALTAR. From the first day I met her, she was the only
woman to me. Every day of that voyage I loved her more, and many a time
since have I kneeled down in the darkness of the night watch and kissed
the deck of that ship because I knew her dear feet had trod it. She was
never engaged to me. She treated me as fairly as ever a woman treated
a man. I have no complaint to make. It was all love on my side, and all
good comradeship and friendship on hers. When we parted she was a free
woman, but I could never again be a free man.

"Next time I came back from sea, I heard of her marriage. Well, why
shouldn't she marry whom she liked? Title and money--who could carry
them better than she? She was born for all that is beautiful and dainty.
I didn't grieve over her marriage. I was not such a selfish hound as
that. I just rejoiced that good luck had come her way, and that she had
not thrown herself away on a penniless sailor. That's how I loved Mary
Fraser.

"Well, I never thought to see her again, but last voyage I was promoted,
and the new boat was not yet launched, so I had to wait for a couple of
months with my people at Sydenham. One day out in a country lane I met
Theresa Wright, her old maid. She told me all about her, about him,
about everythin