The members of the wedding party returned to the ship and straggled into the Mess. Each one as he entered unbuckled his sword-belt, loosened his collar, and called for strong waters. A gloom lay upon the gathering: possibly the shadow of an angel's wing.
"I feel as if I'd been to a funeral," growled the Paymaster. "Awful shows these weddings are!"
"Poor old Guns!" said the A.P. lugubriously.
"She's a jolly nice girl, any way," maintained the Young Doctor.
"Yes," sighed the Junior Watch-keeper, "but still.... He was a good chap...."
The Indiarubber Man was the last to enter. He added his sword to the heap already on the table, glanced at the solemn countenances of his messmates, and lit a cigarette.
"Sunt rerum lachrimæ. I am reminded of a harrowing story," he began, leaning against the tiled stove, "recounted to me by a—a lady.
"We met in London, at a place of popular entertainment, and our acquaintance was, judged by the standards of conventionality, perhaps slender." The Indiarubber Man paused and looked gravely from face to face. "However," he continued, "encouraged by my frank open countenance and sympathetic manner, she was constrained to tell the story of how she once loved and lost...."
The narrator broke off and appeared to have forgotten how the story went on, in dreamy contemplation of his cigarette. The mess waited in silence: at length the Junior Watch-keeper could bear it no longer.
"What did she tell you?"