Next morning I was up mighty early and away to the little valley, first to view my pots and then to pick some flowers for her birthday, remembering her great love for such toys. Coming to the ashes of the fire, I must needs fall a-cursing most vilely like the ill fellow I was, and to swearing many great and vain oaths (and it her birthday!). For here were my pots (what the fire had left of them) all swollen and bulged with the heat, warped and misshapen beyond imagining.
So I stood plucking my beard and cursing them severally and all together, and fetched the nearest a kick that nigh broke my toe and set the pot leaping and bounding a couple of yards, but all unbroken. Going to it I took it up and found it not so much as scratched and hard as any stone. This comforted me somewhat and made me to regret my ill language, more especially having regard to this day, being as it were a day apart. And now as I went on, crossing the stream at a place where were stepping-stones, set there by other hands than mine, as I went, I say, I must needs think what a surly, ill-mannered fellow I was, contrasting the gross man I was become with the gentle, sweet-natured lad I had been. "Well but" (thinks I, excusing myself) "the plantations and a rowing-bench be a school where a man is apt to learn nought but evil and brutality, my wrongs have made me what I am. But again" (thinks I--blaming myself) "wrong and hardship, cruelty and suffering do not debase all men, as witness the brave Frenchman that was whipped to death beside me in the 'Esmeralda' galleass. Wrong and suffering either lift a man to greatness, or debase him to the very brute! She had said as much to me once. And she was right" (thinks I) "for the Frenchman had died the noble gentleman he was born, whiles I, as well-born as he and suffering no greater wrong than he, according to his own account, I had sullied myself with all the vileness and filth of slavedom, had fought and rioted with the worst of them!" And now remembering the shame of it all, I sat me down in the shade of a tree and fell to gloomy and sad reflection, grieving sorely over things long past and forgotten until now, and very full of remorse and scorn of myself.
"Howbeit" (thinks I) "if rogue and brute I am" (which is beyond all doubt) "I will keep such for my own kind and she shall know nought of it!" And here, getting upon my knees I took a great and solemn oath to this effect, viz., "Never by look, or word, or gesture to give her cause for shame or fear so long as we should abide together in this solitude so aid me God!" This done I arose from my knees and betook me to culling flowers, great silver lilies and others of divers hues, being minded to lay them on the threshold of her door to greet her when she should arise. With these in my arms I recrossed the brook and stepping out from a thicket came full upon her ere she was aware; and seeing her so suddenly I stood like any fool, my poor flowers hidden behind me. She had taken up one of my misshapen pots and was patting it softly as she viewed it, and a little smile on her red lips. All at once she turned and, spying me, came towards me all smiling, fresh and radiant as the morning.