I remember one evening I had waited for Jessie and she never came and just before going to bed, I went up into the bow of the ship where one was alone with the sea and sky, and swore to myself this great oath, as I called it in my romantic fancy: whatever I undertook to do, I would do it to the uttermost in me.
If I have had any success in life or done any good work, it is due in great part to that resolution.
I could not keep my thoughts from Jessie; if I tried to put her out of my head, I’d either get a little note from her, or Ponsonby would come begging me to leave him the cabin the whole day: at length in despair I begged her for her address in New York, for I feared to lose her forever in that maelstrom. I added that I would always be in my cabin and alone from one to half past if she could ever come.
That day she didn’t come, and the old gentleman who said he would adopt me, got hold of me, told me he was a banker and would send me to Harvard, the University near Boston; from what the Doctor had said of me, he hoped I would do great things. He was really kind and tried to be sympathetic, but he had no idea that what I wanted chiefly was to prove myself, to justify my own high opinion of my powers in the open fight of life. I didn’t want help and I absolutely resented his protective airs.
Next day in the cabin came a touch on the door and Jessie all flustered was in my arms. “I can only stay a minute”, she cried, “Father is dreadful, says you are only a child and won’t have me engage myself and he watches me from morning to night, I could only get away now because he had to go down to the machine-room.”
Before she had finished, I had locked the cabin door.
“Oh, I must go”, she cried, “I must really; I only came to give you my address in New York, here it is”, and she handed me the paper that I put at once in my pocket. And then I put both my arms under her clothes and my hands were on her warm hips, and I was speechless with delight; in a moment my right hand came round in front and as I touched her sex our lips clung together and her sex opened at once, and my finger began to caress her and we kissed and kissed again. Suddenly her lips got hot and while I was still wondering why, her sex got wet and her eyes began to flutter and turn up. A moment or two later she tried to get out of my embrace.
“Really, dear, I’m frightened: he might come and make a noise and I’d die; please let me go now: we’ll have lots of time in New York”—but I could not bear to let her go. “He’d never come here where there are two men”, I said, “never, he might find the wrong one”, and I drew her to me, but seeing she was only half reassured, I said while lifting her dress, “Let mine just touch yours, and I’ll let you go” and the next moment my sex was against hers and almost in spite of herself she yielded to the throbbing warmth of it; but when I pushed in, she drew away and down on it a little and I saw anxiety in her eyes that had grown very dear to me.
At once I stopped and put away my sex and let her clothes drop. “You’re such a sweet, Jess”, I said, “who could deny you anything; in New York then, but now one long kiss.”
She gave me her mouth at once and her lips were hot. I learned that morning that when a girl’s lips grow hot, her sex is hot first and she is ready to give herself and ripe for the embrace.