"How's he to know, Captain Schuyler, sir?" called out the Mate as he backed water. "He's never been married before."
"How do you know?" roared the Skipper back again. "A true sailor has a wife in every port." Cynthia started and dropped my hand as if it had been a live coal. I seized her hand again, and held it as if it were all that I had to hold to in this world. She looked at me questioningly, as if she distrusted me, and I almost felt that we should never be friends again. Truly, a pleasant beginning to our married life!
The Skipper's marriage service.
I could not hear much of our wedding service, but I remember that it sounded extremely like that which the Skipper had repeated over the two sailors whom he had buried not far from this very spot. I know that he asked us if we would take each other for man and wife, and I remember that he ended with, "And may God have mercy on your souls!" I have seen this printed as a joke since then, but it was no joke to me, only sad, dead earnest. Then he piped up in his old lee-gangway voice, and sang the first verse of a missionary hymn, but because of this I felt none the less the solemnity of the occasion.
I stood in silence, looking at the lovely girl whom I was taking for my wedded wife. She allowed me to hold her hand, as in duty bound. Her trembling little paw was cold, and she stood gazing, not at me, but far out across the wide and desolate ocean. How long we should have remained thus I know not had not the Skipper awakened us by bawling across the intervening swash of water:
"You're married. Do you hear, Jones? You're married."
Cynthia spoke to me only once that evening. As we were left alone a few moments while Lacelle and the Skipper were getting into the boat, she turned to me and asked:
"Was that Heloïse's ring?"