Aye, that was it. Jack Shreve, chief mate of the Golden Bough! "I have decided," says Lynch—but I knew the decision belonged to Newman and the lady, who were smiling at me across the table.
"And you understand—they are leaving in the longboat," added Lynch.
I looked at my friend, and the lady, and my new honor was bitter and worthless in my mouth.
"Take me with you," I urged.
"To share an outlaw's career? No, lad—we must go alone," said Newman. I remember he added to Lynch, "If this boy proves the friend to you he was to me, you will be a lucky man, Captain."
The sky was just graying with the coming day when the two left the ship. But before they went over the side, there took place in the growing light on the deck before the cabin a scene as strange and solemn as any I have seen since. Holy Joe married them, there on the deck—and in the scuppers, behind the lady's back, covered up with a spare sail, lay the ship's dead, Yankee Swope among them. Aye, the parson tied the knot, for this life and next, as he said, and I was best man, and Captain Lynch gave away the bride.
"Roy Waldon, do you take this woman—" that was the way the parson put it, standing there before them, with his one good hand holding the Book, peering up into Newman's face through his puffed, blackened eyes. A minister in dungaree! "Mary Swope, do you take this man—" that was how he put it. And though the lady's face was wan and haggard, yet there was a glory in it beyond power to describe.
And then they cast off from the ship, those two who were now one. Newman stepped the mast, and drew aft the sheet, and the little craft caught the breeze and scudded away from us. We lined the rail, lame men and well men, and cheered our farewell. I wept.
A long time we watched them. The sun leaped up from the sea, and the longboat seemed to sail into its golden heart; and after the sun had risen above it, the boat was visible for a long time as a dwindling, ever dwindling speck. I moved up onto the poop, the longer to see. So did Lynch. Side by side, we watched the speck dip over the rim of the sea.
Lynch sighed, and walked away. I heard him exclaim, and turned to observe him picking up something from the deck. He held it out to me, in the palm of his hand.