"It was cold for that part of the world, and rain fell heavily from time to time. Polly complained bitterly all night and said that she would take her death o' cold, but in the morning (I had fallen asleep) she waked me in her pleasantest and most satisfied voice, saying, 'Tumble up for breakfast.' I pulled myself out of the rain-water into which I had slipped, and sat up. The sky and sea were clear from one horizon to the other and the sun was beginning to scorch.
"'Bully and warm, ain't it?' said Polly.
"'Right you are, old girl,' said I.
"She perched on my shoulder and began to oil and arrange her draggled feathers.
"'What a hell of a wreck that was!' she said suddenly, and, after a pause: 'Where's my nigger?'
"'He's forsaken you, old girl,' said I, 'for Mother Carey's chickens.'
"'Poor Polly,' said she; 'how I pity that poor girl!'
"Now I don't advance for a moment the theory that she understood all that she said, nor even a part of what I said. But her statements and answers were often wonderfully apt. Have you ever known one of those tremendously clever deaf people whom you may talk with for a long time before discovering that they are deaf? Talking with poor Jaffray's parrot was like that. It was only occasionally—not often, mind—that her phrases argued an utter lack of reasoning power. She had been educated to what I suppose to be a point very close to the limit of a parrot's powers. At a fair count she had memorized a hundred and fifty sentences, a dozen songs, and twenty or thirty tunes to whistle. Many savages have not larger vocabularies; many highborn ladies have a less gentle and cultivated enunciation. Let me tell you that had I been alone in that boat, a young man, as I then was, who saw his ambitions and energies doomed to a watery and abrupt finish, with a brief interval of starvation to face, I might easily have gone mad. But I was saved from that because I had somebody to talk to. And to receive confidence and complaint the parrot was better fitted than a human being, better fitted than a woman, for she placed no bar of reticence, and I could despair as I pleased and on my own terms.
"My clothes dried during the first day, and at night she would creep under my coat to sleep. At first I was afraid that during unconsciousness I should roll on her. But she was too wary for that. If I showed a tendency to sprawl or turn over, she would wake and pierce my ears with a sharp 'Take your time! Take your time!'
"At sunrise every day she would wake me with a hearty 'Tumble up for breakfast.'