"And you don't mind my bein' a sailor instead of a missionary?" asked Tom.
"I much prefer it, so long as you don't go to sea," said Susan; and leaving that to be arranged later, Tom Ruddle called the curious Chadwick from his cabin.
"I've fixed it up," said Tom triumphantly. "I've fixed it to rights, sir. My wife is goin' to marry me again, and we'd be much obliged if you would perform the ceremony."
"It seems very irregular," said Chadwick, "but considering the very peculiar circumstances I've no objection to make. It is really very wonderful. I congratulate you both. I must call the captain and tell him about it."
When the second mate came on deck the 'old man' went below. As soon as he grasped the situation he turned to Susan with a grin.
"You brought him to his bearings pretty quick, ma'am, and I congratulate you. But then a pretty woman like you ain't the sort to go long a-beggin'. I knew you'd fetch him! When I described you to him, me bein' a judge of female beauty, I saw how it would be. Who's goin' to do the new hitching?"
Mr. Chadwick said he was going to do it.
"It's the first time I ever married the same couple twice," he said; and Brother Blithers sat in the background and said it was uncanonical. But no one paid any attention to Blithers. The other missionaries chipped in with their congratulations, and said that they hoped Ruddle would still be one of them.
"Thank you, gentlemen," said Ruddle, "but I have too much admiration for you to think I can be one of you again. I have a cousin that's a shipowner, and when he finds that I'm alive and in my right sea senses, he'll give me a ship, for though I've never been skipper of anythin' yet, I hold a master's certificate. And my wife will go to sea with me."
"Darling, I'll go anywhere with you," whispered Susan. And then they were married, while the gale roared about them, and the good old Ocean Wave rode it out under a goose-winged main-topsail as comfortably as a duck in a puddle.