Mary's sister Louisa is, however, more seriously seduced. Mary falls, innocently, for Beck, who can quote Melville's Moby-Dick (a book she could never finish) on "the ungraspable phantom of life". Those men include such oracular veterans as Salty – "it is the spotted whale you must fear" (that is, a whale previously harpooned) – senior and junior Aboriginal crew, among them Darcy Madigan, and the supposed Methodist clergyman, John Beck, whose past becomes a matter of suspicious conjecture. With her mother dead, Mary takes over the responsibilities of educating her younger siblings and of feeding the whaling crews in season – flap of mutton when possible, bandicoot at a pinch.
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