And half an hour later, when old Tommy came to bring me some lobsters (he still declares they are the only food for invalids) and to ask “how’s the lil woman now?” I heard him moaning, as he was going out: 

“There’ll be no shelter for her this voyage, the vogh! She’ll carry the sea in with her to the Head, I’m thinking.”

* * * * *

JULY 27.  I must keep it up—­I must, I must!  To allow Martin’s hopes and dreams to be broken in upon now would be enough to kill me outright.

I don’t want to be unkind, but some explorers leave the impression that their highest impulse is the praise of achievement, and once they have done something all they’ve got to do next is to stay at home and talk about it.  Martin is not like that.  Exploration is a passion with him.  The “lure of the little voices” and the “call of the Unknown” have been with him from the beginning, and they will be with him to the end.

I cannot possibly think of Martin dying in bed, and being laid to rest in the green peace of English earth—­dear and sweet as that is to tamer natures, mine for instance.  I can only think of that wild heroic soul going up to God from the broad white wilderness of the stormy South, and leaving his body under heaving hummocks of snow with blizzards blowing a requiem over his grave.

Far off may that glorious ending be, but shall my poor failing heart make it impossible?  Never, never, never!

Moral—­I’m going to get up every day—­whatever my nurse may say.

* * * * *

JULY 28.  I was rocking baby to sleep this afternoon when Christian Ann, who was spinning by the fire, told me of a quarrel between Aunt Bridget and Nessy MacLeod.

It seems that Nessy (who says she was married to my father immediately before the operation) claims to be the heiress of all that is left, and as the estate includes the Big House she is “putting the law on” Aunt Bridget to obtain possession.

Poor Aunt Bridget!  What a pitiful end to all her scheming for Betsy Beauty, all her cruelties to my long-suffering mother, all her treatment of me—­to be turned out of doors by her own step-daughter!

When old Tommy heard of the lawsuit, he said: 

“Chut!  Sarves her right, I say!  It’s the black life the Big Woman lived before, and it’s the black life she’ll be living now, and her growing old, and the Death looking in on her.”

* * * * *

JULY 29.  We have finished the proofs to-day and Dr. O’Sullivan has gone back with them.  I thought he looked rather wae when he came to say good-bye to me, and though he made a great deal of noise his voice was husky when (swearing by his favourite Saints) he talked about “returning for the tenth with all the boys, including Treacle.”

Of course that was nonsense about his being in love with me.  But I’m sure he loves me all the same—­many, many people love me.  I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve all this love.  I have had a great deal of love in my life now that I come to think of it.