“’Oh, bury me not on the lonesome prairie
     Where the wild coyotes howl o’er me,’

was the song she sang and I wondered where she had ever picked it up.

“Well,” continued the chief, “to cast a sheep shank in a long line, these visits kept up every evening until I was pretty near drove distracted.  Along she’d come about sun-down and stick around devilin’ me and drinking up all my grog.  After a while she began calling for gin and kept threatening me until I just had to satisfy her.  She also made me buy her a brush and comb, a mouth organ and a pair of spectacles, together with a lot of other stuff on the strength of the fact that if I refused she would make a scene.  In this way that doggon mermaid continually kept me broke, for my wage warn’t enough to make me heavy and I had my home to support.

“‘Don’t you ever go home?’ I asked her one night.

“‘No,’ she replied, ’I ain’t ever going back home.  I don’t like it down there.  There ain’t no liquor dealers.’

“‘But your husband,’ exclaims I.  ‘What of him?’

“‘I know,’ says she, ’but I don’t like him and I’m off my baby, too.  It squints,’ says she.

“‘But all babies squint,’ says I.

“‘Mine shouldn’t,’ says she.  ‘It ain’t right.’

“Then one night an awful thing happened.  My wife came down to the dock to find out how I spent all my money.  It was a bright moon-lit night and this lost soul of a mermaid was hanging around, particularly jilled and entreating.  I was just in the act of passing her down the gin flask and she was saying to me, ’Come on down, old love; you know you’re crazy about me,’ when all of a sudden I heard an infuriated shriek behind me and saw my wife leaning over the dock shaking an umbrella at this huzzy of a mermaid.  Oh, son,” broke off the Chief, “if you only knew the uncontrolled violence and fury of two contending women.  Nothing you meet on shipboard will ever equal it.  I was speechless, rocked in the surf of a tumult of words.  And in the midst of it all what should happen but the husband of the mermaid pops out of the water with a funny little bit of a merbaby in his arms.

“‘Go home at once, sir,’ screams my wife, ‘and put on your clothes.’

“‘I will,’ he shouts back, ‘if my wife will come along with me.’

“He was a weazened up little old man with a crooked back.  Not very prepossessing.  I could hardly blame his wife.

“‘So that bit of stuff is your wife, is it?’ cries out my old lady, and with that she began telling him her past.

“‘I know it,’ says the little old merman at last, almost crying; ’I know it, but I ain’t got no control over her whatsoever.  I’ve been trying to get her to come home for the last fortnight, but she just won’t leave off going around with the sailors.  The whole beach is ashamed of her.  It’s general talk down below.  What can I do?  The little old coral house is going to wrack and ruin and the baby ain’t been properly took care of since she left.  What am I going to do, madam?  What am I going to do?  I’m well nigh distracted.’