Her aunt, who had not uttered since her husband entered the room, was frying bacon over the fire. No one spoke. Mary was aware of Joss Merlyn watching her across the table, and behind her she could hear her aunt fumbling with ineffectual fingers at the hot handle of the frying pan. In a minute she had dropped it, uttering a little cry of distress. Mary rose from her place to help her, but Joss thundered at her to sit down.

"One fool is bad enough, without making a couple of them," he shouted. "Keep your seat and let your aunt clear up the mess. It won't be for the first time." He leant back in his chair and began to pick his teeth with his nails. "What'll you drink?" he asked her. "Brandy, wine, or ale? You may starve here, but you won't go thirsty. We don't get sore throats at Jamaica." And he laughed at her, and winked, and put out his tongue.

"I'll have a cup of tea if I may," said Mary. "I'm not used to drinking spirits, nor wine neither."

"Oh, you're not? Well, it's your loss, I'm glad to say. You can have your tea tonight, but, by God, you'll want some brandy in a month or two."

He reached across the table and took hold of her hand.

"You've a pretty enough paw for one who's worked on a farm," he said. "I was afraid it would be rough and red. If there's one thing that makes a man sick it's to have his ale poured out by an ugly hand. Not that my customers are over-particular, but then we've never had a barmaid before at Jamaica Inn." He gave her a mock bow and dropped her hand.

"Patience, my dear," he said, "here's the key. Go and fetch me a bottle of brandy, for the Lord's sake. I've a thirst on me that all the waters of Dozmary would not slake." His wife hurried across the room at his word and disappeared into the passage. Then he fell to picking his teeth again, whistling from time to time, while Mary ate her bread and butter and drank the tea that he placed before her. Already a splitting headache tightened her brow, and she was ready to drop. Her eyes watered from the peat smoke. But she was not too tired to watch her uncle, for already she had caught something of the nervousness of her Aunt Patience and felt that in some sense they were here like mice in a trap, unable to escape, with him playing with them like a monstrous cat.

In a few minutes his wife returned with the brandy, which she put in front of her husband, and while she finished her cooking of the bacon and served Mary and herself, he fell to drinking, staring moodily before him, kicking the leg of the table. Suddenly he thumped the table with his fist, shaking the plates and cups, while one platter crashed to the floor and broke.

"I tell you what it is, Mary Yellan," he shouted. "I'm master in this house, and I'll have you know it. You'll do as you're told, and help in the house and serve my customers, and I'll not lay a finger on you. But, by God, if you open your mouth and squark, I'll break you until you eat out of my hand the same as your aunt yonder."

Mary faced him across the table. She held her hands in her lap so that he should not see them tremble.

"I understand you," she said. "I'm not curious by nature, and I've never gossiped in my life. It doesn't matter to me what you do in the inn, or what company you keep. I'll do my work about the house and you'll have no cause to grumble. But if you hurt my Aunt Patience in any way, I tell you this — I'll leave Jamaica Inn straight away, and I'll find the magistrate, and bring him here, and have the law on you; and then try and break me if you like."

Mary had turned very pale, and she knew that if he thundered at her now she would break down and cry, and he would have the mastery of her for ever. The torrent of words had come from her in spite of herself, and, wrung with pity for the poor broken thing that was her aunt, she could not control them. Had she but known it, she had saved herself, for her little show of spirit impressed the man, and he leant back in his chair and relaxed.

"That's very pretty," he said; "very prettily put indeed. Now we know just what sort of lodger we have. Scratch her, and she shows her claws. All right, my dear; you and I are more akin than I thought. If we are going to play, we'll play together. I may have work for you at Jamaica one day, work that you've never done before. Man's work, Mary Yellan, where you play with life and death." Mary heard her Aunt Patience give a little gasp beside her.

"Oh, Joss," she whispered. "Oh, Joss, please!"

There was so much urgency in her voice that Mary stared at her in surprise. She saw her aunt lean forward and motion her husband to be silent, and the very eagerness of her chin and the agony in her eyes frightened Mary more than anything that had happened that night. She felt eerie suddenly, chilled, and rather sick. What had roused Aunt Patience to such panic? What had Joss Merlyn been about to say? She was aware of a fevered and rather terrible curiosity. Her uncle waved his hand impatiently.

"Get up to bed, Patience," he said. "I'm tired of your death's-head at my supper table. This girl and I understand one another."

The woman rose at once and went to the door, with a last ineffectual glance of despair over her shoulder. They heard her patter up the stairs. Joss Merlyn and Mary were alone. He pushed the empty brandy glass away from him and folded his arms on the table.

"There's been one weakness in my life, and I'll tell you what it is," he said. "It's drink. It's a curse, and I know it. I can't stop myself. One day it'll be the end of me, and a good job too. There's days go by and I don't touch more than a drop, same as I've done tonight. And then I'll feel the thirst come on me and I'll soak. Soak for hours. It's power, and glory, and women, and the Kingdom of God, all rolled into one. I feel a king then, Mary. I feel I've got the strings of the world between my two fingers. It's heaven and hell. I talk then, talk until every damned thing I've ever done is spilt to the four winds. I shut myself in my room and shout my secrets in my pillow. Your aunt turns the key on me, and when I'm sober I hammer on the door and she lets me out. There's no one knows that but she and I, and now I've told you. I've told you because I'm already a little drunk and I can't hold my tongue. But I'm not drunk enough to lose my head. I'm not drunk enough to tell you why I live in this God-forgotten spot, and why I'm the landlord of Jamaica Inn." His voice was hoarse, and now he scarcely spoke above a whisper. The turf fire had sunk low in the hearth, and dark shadows stretched long fingers on the wall. The candles too had burnt down, and cast a monstrous shadow of Joss Merlyn on the ceiling. He smiled at her, and with a foolish drunken gesture he laid his finger against his nose.

"I've not told you that, Mary Yellan. Oh no, I've got some sense and cunning left. If you want to know any more you can ask your aunt. She'll pull you a tale. I heard her blathering tonight, telling you we kept fine company here, and the squire takes off his hat to her. It's lies, all lies. I'll tell you that much, for you'll come to know it anyway. Squire Bassat's too mortal scared to shove his nose in here. If he saw me in the road he'd cross his heart and spur his horse. And so would all the precious gentry. The coaches don't stop here now, nor the mails neither. I don't worry; I've customers enough. The wider berth the gentry give to me the better pleased I am. Oh, there's drinking here all right, and plenty of it too. There's some who come to Jamaica Saturday night, and there's some who turn the key of their door and sleep with their fingers in their ears. There are nights when every cottage on the moors is dark and silent, and the only lights for miles are the blazing windows of Jamaica Inn. They say the shouting and the singing can be heard as far down as the farms below Rough Tor. You'll be in the bar those nights, if you've a fancy for it, and you'll see what company I keep."

Mary sat very still, gripping the sides of her chair. She dared not move for fear of that swift changing of his mood which she had observed already, and which would turn him from this sudden intimate tone of confidence to a harsh and coarse brutality.

"They're all afraid of me," he went on; "the whole damned lot of 'em. Afraid of me, who's afraid of no man. I tell you, if I'd had education, if I'd had learning, I'd have walked the breadth of England beside King George himself. It's drink that's been against me, drink and my hot blood. It's the curse of all of us, Mary. There's never been a Merlyn yet that died peaceful in his bed.

"My father was hanged at Exeter — he had a brawl with a fellow and killed him. My granddad had his ears cut for thieving; he was sent out to a convict settlement and died raving mad from a snake bite in the tropics. I'm the eldest of three brothers, all of us born under the shadow of Kilmar, away yonder above Twelve Men's Moor. You walk out over there across the East Moor till you come to Rushyford, and you'll see a great crag of granite like a devil's hand sticking up into the sky. That's Kilmar. If you'd been born under its shadow you'd take to drink, same as I did. My brother Matthew, he was drowned in Trewartha Marsh. We thought he'd gone for a sailor, and had no news of him, and then in the summer there was a drought, and no rain fell for seven months, and there was Matthew sticking up in the bog, with his hands above his head, and the curlews flying round him. My brother Jem, damn him, he was the baby. Hanging onto mother's skirts when Matt and I were grown men. I never did see eye to eye with Jem. Too smart he is, too sharp with his tongue. Oh, they'll catch him in time and hang him, same as they did my father."

He fell silent a moment, gazing at his empty glass. He picked it up and put it down again. "No," he said, "I've said enough. I'll have no more tonight. Go up to bed, Mary, before I wring your neck. Here's your candle. You'll find your room over the porch."

Mary took the candlestick without speaking and was about to pass him when he seized hold of her shoulder and twisted her round.

"There'll be nights sometimes when you'll hear wheels on the road," he said, "and those wheels will not pass on, but they'll stop outside Jamaica Inn. And you'll hear footsteps in the yard, and voices beneath your window. When that happens, you'll stay in your bed, Mary Yellan, and cover your head with the blankets. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Uncle."

"Very well. Now get out, and if you ever ask me a question again I'll break every bone in your body."

She went out of the room and into the dark passage, bumping against the settle in the hall, and so upstairs, feeling her way with her hands, judging her whereabouts by turning round and facing the stairs again. Her uncle had told her the room over the porch, and she crept across the dark landing, which was unlit, pass two doors on either side — guest rooms, she imagined, waiting for those travellers who never came nowadays nor sought shelter beneath the roof of Jamaica Inn — and then stumbled against another door and turned the handle, and saw by the flickering flame of her candle that this was her room, for her trunk lay on the floor.

The walls were rough and unpapered, and the floor boards bare. A box turned upside down served as a dressing table, with a cracked looking-glass on top. There was no jug or basin; she supposed she would wash in the kitchen. The bed creaked when she leant upon it, and the two thin blankets felt damp to her hand. She decided she would not undress, but would lie down upon it in her travelling clothes, dusty as they were, with her cloak wrapped round her. She went to the window and looked out. The wind had dropped, but it was still raining — a thin wretched drizzle that trickled down the side of the house and smeared the dirt on the windowpane.

A noise came from the far end of the yard, a curious groaning sound like that of an animal in pain. It was too dark to see clearly, but she could make out a dark shape swinging gently to and fro. For one nightmare of a moment, her imagination on fire with the tales Joss Merlyn had told her, she thought it was a gibbet, and a dead man hanging. And then she realised it was the signboard of the inn, that somehow or other, through neglect, had become insecure upon its nails and now swung backwards, forwards, with the slightest breeze. Nothing but a poor battered board, that had once known prouder days in its first erection, but whose white lettering was now blurred and grey, and whose message was at the mercy of the four winds — Jamaica Inn — Jamaica Inn. Mary pulled down the blind and crept to her bed. Her teeth were chattering, and her feet and hands were numb. For a long while she sat huddled on the bed, a prey to despair. She wondered whether it was possible to break from the house and find her way back the twelve long miles to Bodmin. She wondered whether her weariness would prove too much for her, and if with an agony of fatigue she would drop by the roadside and fall asleep where she lay, only to be awakened by the morning light and to see the great form of Joss Merlyn towering above her.