"Is it honest to do this, Geoff?" Ariadne asked, a look of doubt on her young face.
"Honest, my dear! Why, child, there is no spot of honesty in't at all. Honest, i'faith! Is it honest to buy men's bodies as one buys dogs and cattle? honest to drench and drug men with gin, and then fling them aboard as one would fling a side of beef aboard? Nay, 'tis honest to rescue such, to give them a chance of serving King and country; to have a mort of food and rum into them two and three times a day, as much 'baccy as they can smoke, and many a guinea to spend on Sal and Sukie when they get ashore. That's honest, my dear, and what the sky-pilots call 'Christian.'"
"If they ever do get ashore to see Sal and Sukie; if the French do not kill them," said Ariadne.
"Well! come what may, I must get ashore," said Geoffrey, as now he saw his gig tossing on the turbulent waves of the windswept river; "so fare ye well, sweetheart, until to-night. You have that new-fangled novel thing to read, and Anne and her mother are with you, wherefore you will not be dull till bedtime."
Then, changing his blustering, good-natured tone for one more serious as he stooped and kissed her; while noticing again, as he held her in his arms, as he had often noticed before, how slight and delicate a thing his child-wife was, he whispered:
"Oh! my love, my love, how I do worship thee. Sweetheart, will the hours be long till I come back?"
"As ever and always they are," she whispered too, her arms around his neck and her cheek against his. "As ever and always they are."
"You do not regard me as only a rude, rough sailor," he asked now; "one ruthless in his duty? Nor cruel?"
"Nay, nay, never; but as the man of my heart--my only love, my husband."
"So! that is well. Again, farewell till to-night. Farewell, dear one," and, reaching the deck, he grasped the manropes when, entering his gig, he was rowed ashore.