"I love you," I said, "but I cannot marry you. I am marrying Lord Wurzel."
"That beast?" cried Andrew, in the impetuous sailor fashion which so endeared him to his shipmates. "When I come back I will thrash him as I would thrash a vicious ape."
"When will that be?"
"In about two months," said my darling boy. "This is going to be a very quick expedition."
"Alas, that will be my wedding day," I said with a low sob like that of a buffalo yearning for its mate. "It will be too late."
Andrew took me in his strong arms. I should not have let him, but I could not help it.
"Listen," he said, "I will start back from the Pole a day before my shipmates, and save you from that d-sh-d beast. And then I will marry you, Nell."
There was a roaring in my ears like the roaring of the bath when the tap is left on; many waters seemed to rush upon me; my hat fell off, and then deep oblivion came over me and I swooned.
To go through my emotions in detail during the next two months would be but to harrow you needlessly. Suffice it to say that seventeen times I flung myself face downwards on my bed and bit a piece out of the pillow, on twenty-nine occasions the blood ebbed slowly from my face, and my heart fluttered like a captured bird, while in a hundred and forty instances a wave of emotion surged slowly over my whole body, leaving me trembling like an aspen leaf. Otherwise my health remained good.