And now our story takes a leap of many months, and we find the Highland Mary, a most beautiful yacht, somewhat of the Wolverine type, far, far at sea, considerable to nor’ard of the Line, however, but bounding on under a spread of whitest canvas, over just such a sea as the sailor loves. No big waves here, but wavelets of the darkest steel-blue, and each one wrinkled and dimpled with the warm, delightful breeze, kissed by the sunlight, and reflecting the glory in millions of broken rays, as if the sea were besprinkled with precious stones and diamonds of purest ray serene.
Let us take a look on deck. We cannot but be struck with the neatness and brightness of everything our eyes fall upon. The fires are out. There is no roaring steam, no clouds of dark, dense smoke, no grind and grind of machinery, and no fall of black and sooty hailstones from the funnel. Ill indeed would this have accorded with the ivory whiteness of the quarter-deck, with the snow-white table linen, which one can catch a glimpse of down through the open skylight. But worst of all would it accord with the dainty dresses of the ladies, or the snowy sailor garb of the officers. The ladies are but two in reality, Annie herself—now Mrs Reginald Grahame—and daft, pretty wee Matty. But there is Annie’s maid, Jeannie Lee, looking as modest and sweet as she ever did. Annie is seated in a cushioned chair, and, just as of old, Matty is on Reginald’s knee. If Annie is not jealous of her, she certainly is not jealous of Annie. In her simple, guileless young heart, she believes that she comes first in Reginald’s affections, and that Annie has merely second place.
I daresay it is the bracing breeze and the sunshine that makes Matty feel so happy and merry to-day. Well, sad indeed would be the heart that rejoiced not on such a day as this! Why, to breathe is joy itself; the air seems to fill one with exhilaration, like gladsome, sparkling wine.
Here is Captain Dickson. He never did look jollier, with his rosy, laughing face, his gilt-bound cap and his jacket of blue, than he does now. He is half-sitting, half-standing on the edge of the skylight, and keeping up an animated conversation with Annie. Poor Annie, her troubles and trials seem over now, and she looks quietly, serenely happy; her bonnie face—set off by that tiny flower-bedecked bride’s bonnet—is radiant with smiles.
But Matty wriggles down from Reginald’s knee at last, and is off to have a game of romps with Sigmund, the splendid Dane. Sigmund is four-and-thirty inches high at the shoulder, shaped in body somewhat like a well-built pointer, but in head like a long-faced bull-terrier. His coat is short, and of a slatey-blue; his tail is as straight and strong as a capstan bar. At any time he has only to switch it across Matty’s waist, when down she rolls on the ivory-white decks. Then Sigmund bends down, and gives her cheek just one loving lick, to show there is no bad feeling; but so tickled is he at the situation, that with lips drawn back and pearly teeth showing in a broad smile, he must set out on a wild and reckless rush round and round the decks from winch to binnacle. If a sailor happens to get in his way, he is flung right into the air by the collision, and is still on his back when Sigmund returns. But the dog bounds over the fallen man, and continues his mad gallop until, fairly exhausted, he comes back to lie down beside Matty, with panting breath, and about a yard, more or less, of a red-ribbon of tongue depending from one side of his mouth.
Matty loves Sigmund, but she loves Oscar more, and wonders if she will ever see him once again; and she wonders, too, if Sigmund and Oscar will agree, or if they will fight, which would be truly terrible to think of.
Yonder is McGregor. He is elevated to the rank of bo’s’n, and the three other sailors that came home in the Vulcan are here too. With the pile in gold and pearls they made on the Isle of Flowers, they needn’t have been now serving before the mast. This would probably be their last voyage, for they meant to go into business on shore. But they loved the sea, and they loved Reginald and Dickson too. So here they were, and many more tars also; and when the main-brace was spliced of a Saturday night, it would have been good for anyone to have come forward to the bows and listened to the songs sung and the tales told by honest Jack.
But how came Matty on board? The story is soon told, and it is a sad one. A few weeks after his marriage, being in London, and dropping into the Savoy Hotel on the now beautiful Embankment, Reginald found Mr Hall standing languid and lonely by the bar with a little glass of green liquor in his hand.