"I publish the banns of marriage, between Jerry Thompson, bachelor, and Missis Jow—ahem!—Chinese female. If any of you fellers (looking across at some people who were taking their breakfast upon the deck of a canal boat anchored a short distance from the Big Dog) knows any just cause why we shouldn't be jined in the bonds of matrimony, just sing out."
As the "fellers" addressed did not take the slightest notice of his appeal, the sailor took Jow by the hand, pressed a ring upon her finger, and a kiss upon her lips, and, as she appeared to acquiesce in the proceedings, declared they were properly wedded, and the articles signed.
This remarkably concise ceremony being concluded, the happy pair began their honeymoon, Jerry by descending to the cabin, where he poured out a cup of Mo's choicest samshoo, in which to drink success to the wedding, while Mrs. J. (Jow or Jerry according to taste, the initial serving for both) proceeded to prepare breakfast for her new lord. Alas! that such a simple act as the latter should prove so fatal to all their dreams of future happiness, and give an affair with so comic a début a tragic finale.
After having lighted the galley fire, Mrs. J. proceeded to the boat's side to draw a bucket of water, but the rope being too short, the first operation was unsuccessful.
"How provoking—the bucket didn't get nearly low enough," soliloquized the fair creature. "It will never do to call Chè-rè, O-mi-tu-fuh! (O great Buddha) what shall I do?"
Uttering this short "prayer under adverse circumstances," Mrs. J. stood on tip-toe, shook the rope, lowered it until she felt the bucket touch the water, reached over, saying, "Hech! he-ch! the bucket won't—fill—he-ch!" when she suddenly lost her balance, and, with a cry of fear, plunged headlong overboard. Poor Mrs. J.! in her descent she must have struck her head against the boat's side, as, upon rising to the surface again, she made no effort to swim, but quietly sank to rise no more.
This catastrophe was calmly witnessed by a number of sampan-men and the "fellers" on an adjoining canal boat, to whom Jerry had appealed, when publishing his banns; but not one of them made the slightest attempt to save her, believing "that the River God had got her," and it would be calling his vengeance down upon their own heads it they tried to rescue her from his grasp. They sat and watched the affair much as they would have done the death of a kitten, and when it was all over, coolly remarked to each other, "that she didn't kick much when the God grasped her."
Jerry, busy below with the samshoo, did not hear the splash; and when he again returned to the deck was informed by a sampan-man, who was waiting for a fare alongside a neighbouring boat, that his woman had given herself to the River God. Other spectators of the tragedy added their testimony to the boatman's, and Jerry found that without doubt Mrs. J. was gone.
After diving in the water, and searching under the boat, in hopes the poor creature might have "lodged" there, but finding that she was indeed carried off by the River God, Jerry reluctantly gave up his search, and returned to the Big Dog, which was by this time swarming with sampan-men, who, taking advantage of the owner's trouble, were plundering the craft in a most business-like manner.