her. When the boat had got up to the wharf, too, he had a way of discharging his ballast of politeness, to make use of his own expression, while at the same time discharging his load of fish, that attracted about his fasts all the blackguards and all the idlers of the harbor.
These things would pour from his mouth, at one time terrific and of short duration, like the report of a cannon, and again reverberating like thunder-claps, which for five minutes at a time would keep up such a rolling fire of bad language that it seemed as if all the tempests of the Everlasting Father must have their home within his breast.
When, after this performance, he had left his vessel and was face to face with her amid the throng of gaping idlers and fishwives, he would summon up from the mysterious recesses of his memory an entirely fresh assortment of outrages and insults, and in this way would conduct her home to their dwelling, she preceding, he following, she weeping, he shouting at the top of his voice.
Then, when the doors were closed and they were alone together, he would beat her upon the most trifling pretext. Anything sufficed him for an excuse for raising his hand to her, and when he had once begun he never stopped, brutally casting in her face at such times the true reasons of his hatred. At every slap, at every cuff he would roar: "Ah! you beggar, you! You scarecrow, you starveling! A pretty stroke of business I made of it the day when I washed my mouth with the vile stuff of that rascally old father of yours!"
She was living, now, poor woman, in a never-ceasing
