Then Lygon went on.
“I want to tell you everything. You asked me the first day I met you what brought me on board that whaler, and I answered, ‘Foolishness.’ I did not lie, but my foolishness led me further than most men go. I killed a man in a fight in a gambling den of New York. He was a German Jew. The quarrel was about money, and I was excited with drink and he struck me, then I struck him. I am a powerful man, and the blow took him on the point of the chin and broke his neck. I can see him still as a man held him up on one knee. He was quite dead. Then before they could seize me I jumped from a window. It was a hot night and the window was open and the room on the ground floor. I reached a yard and then a street. It was on the East Side. I had luck and got clear away on board a ship bound for New Orleans. I kept to the sea for a year and then found myself in New Bedford, where I joined that whaler. I tell you this because I love Kineia. It is the only thing the world has against me.”
Jourdain was silent for a moment. Then he spoke: “You did not mean to kill.”
“I did not, but if they had caught me I might have paid the penalty, for that crowd would have sworn anything.”
“Are you a gambler?”
“No. I have gambled, but I am not a gambler.”
“And you do not drink?”
“No. I hate drink.”
Again the old man was silent, his eyes resting on the little cascade and his thoughts far away.
“That was four years ago,” said he at last.