"My dear Jack—" I began to protest.
"Oh, be quiet," said he, "and let me do the talking! I've had no one to talk to, these five months around the Horn, but a Norwegian skipper, a first mate of the same country, a fellow-passenger shipped off as a dipsomaniac for a cure (we lost him somewhere in the worst of it—I've an idea he let himself be swept overboard), and a mixed crew that I helped to cure of beri-beri at St. Helena. So I want to do the talking, with your leave.
"—And I want to say this first, foremost, once and for all. I am come simply to tell you. I understand the devil of a lot about hatred by this time—more than you will ever begin to guess. But you taught me, anyhow, this much about friendship, that I couldn't bear to go along with you without your knowing every atom of the truth. That means, we're going to be clean cuts, when I've done.… You'll loathe the tale. But, damn it, you shall respect me for this, that I cut clean, for old sake's sake, and wiped up the account, before we parted as strangers and I started life afresh."
"All this is pretty mysterious, Jack," said I. "You know that, for all the hurt he'd done you, I shied out of helping your pursuit of Farrell.… Tell me, what happened to Farrell? Went down in the Eurotas, I guess, and so squared accounts. That's what you mean— eh?—by your clean cut and starting life afresh?… If so, for your sake I'm glad of it."
"He didn't go down in the Eurotas," Foe answered gravely: "As a matter of fact I dragged him on board one of the boats with my own hands."
"What?" said I. "Farrell another survivor?"
"Upon my word," he answered, lighting a cigarette, "I can't swear to Farrell's being alive or dead. Probably he's dead; but anyway I've no further use for him, and that's where the clean cut comes in. I had to quit hold of him because a woman beat me.… Now sit quiet and listen."
FOE'S NARRATIVE.
"Did you know that Farrell had married?… Yes, at San Ramon, a little portless place some way down the coast of Peru. The woman was a Peruvian and owned a banana-strip there, left to her by her first husband, a drunkard, in part-compensation for having ill-used and beaten her.
"When I ran Farrell to earth there, after he'd given me the slip for twelve months and more, this woman had married him and almost made a new man of him. In another month or so I don't doubt she'd have converted him into man enough to tell her all the truth, and let her deliver him.