For answer he caught her around the shoulders and turned her towards him. Looking down into her eyes, he said earnestly, “Ruthie, darling, are you sure you love me? Will you be content to marry me—a fisherman—and be a fisherman’s wife? Would you, if your mother consented, marry me in a few days, and sail with me adown the seas on a sailor’s honeymoon? Would you?” With heart thumping wildly, he waited for her answer, and when it came—a soft-spoken “Yes!”—he saw her face alight with the pure flame of love and her blue eyes smiling with adoration of him. Then he kissed her fervidly and laughed with the joy of realization and triumph.
“So we shall, sweetheart,” he cried joyously. “We shall get married and you’ll sail with me—not to Demerara—but to auld, grey Scotland. And you’ll sail as a sailor’s bride, for I am of the sailor breed, but not as a fisherman’s wife, for you’ll be Lady Ruth McKenzie! Aye, sweetheart, Lady Ruth McKenzie, wife of Sir Donald McKenzie of Dunsany, and heir to eight hundred thousand pounds!”
The sun glow flared in the golden west and the whispering spruce and pines stirred in the evening breeze as the night-bird gave tune to his nocturnal serenade. On the bold head-land, facing the eternal sea, two deliriously happy souls gazed out upon the waters, and the man murmured, “I’ve seen it in murmuring calms and crooning under the stars, and I’ve seen it when the hail and sleet and the big graybacks went roaring down the wind. It has been cruel and kind; it has scourged me and inspired me; it took my father ruthlessly from me, but it made of me a man! It has taken much, but it has given much. It brought me to you, and I love it, as I love you, for it has given me the greatest blessing in all the wide, wide world ... you!”
EPILOGUE
(Extract from an Article in the “Community Magazine.”)
A striking example of the benefits which can be conferred upon a small town through the munificence of one of its citizens can be seen in the little fishing port of Eastville, Nova Scotia. Eastville is probably one of the most contented towns on the continent of America, and it owes its many advantages as a community to a young sailor-fisherman—Sir Donald Percival McKenzie, Bart.
Many years ago, Donald McKenzie came to Eastville as a poor sailor lad in company with Captain Nickerson, who had befriended him at sea. He afterwards sailed in Bank fishing schooners with Nickerson and learned the business of a fisherman. In those days he had no knowledge of the good fortune which was in store for him, but plied his hazardous vocation until he commanded a vessel of his own at twenty-one. Through a strange turn of fate, the Eastville fishing skipper fell heir to an ancient Scottish baronetcy and a fortune estimated at four million dollars.
Instead of returning to live on the ancestral estate in the Highlands of Scotland, Sir Donald built a modern replica of Dunsany Castle on Eastville Cape, and devoted his money and talents to the benefit of his adopted town. As an experienced fisherman, he naturally turned his attention to the fishing industry, and organized a company in which practically all the citizens of Eastville are share-holders. This thriving concern, known as the Eastville Community Fisheries, Ltd., own and operate a fine fleet of some fifty fishing schooners and West India freighters, and the shore establishments consist of a cold storage, fish cannery, sail lofts, blacksmith shop, shipyard, marine railway, and large buildings and drying yards for the preparation of dried salted fish.