Sailor Captain: I swear my allegiance, your Majesty.
Joe: I rely on my sailors to clear the coast and seas. But first I want your allegiance in another high concern. Some fourteen years ago, when I was a lad of ten, I journeyed with my royal father to the castle of the Duke of Cornwall, which stands high on the wind-swept coast. Its giddy towers rise sheer above the ocean until the very rooks nesting in the battlements grow dizzy at the height. It is the outer bastion of the world, laughing to scorn the ocean's siege.
In that castle, Captain, there lived a little girl; and she and I romped the sounding corridors together. And once I led her to an open 'brasure in the steep-pitched wall, and held her so that she might see the waves curling on the rocks below. And tales of mermaids I invented, and shipwreck and treasure buried in the noisy caverns of the rock, where twice a day the greedy tide goes in and out to seek its fortune. And far afield we wandered and stood waist-deep in the golden meadows, until the weary twilight called us home.
And I remember, when tired with play, that her mother sang to us an old song, a lullaby. Her voice was soft, with a gentleness that only a mother knows who sits with drowsy children.
And to that little girl I was betrothed. It was sworn with oath and signature that some day I would marry her and that, when I became king of England in the revolving years, she would be its queen.
Betsy: By what miracle did you know me, Hal?
Joe: It was the song you sang. Your voice was the miracle that told the secret. With unvarnished speech I woo you. I love you, Margaret, and I ask you to be my wife.
Meg: (faintly—floating in a golden sea of grog) Hooray!
(Joe takes Betsy in his arms and kisses her.)
Joe: The magic of your lips, my dear, is the miracle that answers me. My loyal sailors, I present you. Margaret, Duchess of Cornwall, Countess of Devon, Princess of the Western Marches, by right and title possessor of all land 'twixt Exeter and Land's End. And now, by her consent and the grace of God, the wife of Harry, King of England.