"Thank you, Tempest, for that. I don't want you to think I disparage Bertha, for I have no wish; but when compared to Pauline——"
"Stay, captain. Let us be just. To me, my wife is the most beautiful, the most peerless woman on earth. To me she is perfection. I know of nothing which could be compared to her beauty, to the flash of her eye, to the sweetness of her smile. But what she is to me, Pauline Jones may be to you. Let us not make comparisons. We each judge from our own standpoint."
"But you are prejudiced——"
"Stay, captain, I have not finished. If you thought of my wife as I do—if she was to you the perfection of heaven transferred to earth, you would hate me for being her husband, for you would want her. If Pauline was to me what you think her, I should hate you, for I should wish to claim such beauty and perfection for myself. No, no, old fellow! Our loves are all they should be. And I pray Heaven to strike me dead that moment I first begin to think any woman more beautiful or more perfect than my Bertha."
"Sail, ho!"
That cry put a stop to all love talk.
From love-sick swains the officers were speedily transformed into warriors.
"Where away?" asked Vernon.
"Due east."
"What ensign does she fly?"