“Afore you could say Jack Robinson, I was along side—grapplin’-irons hove into her riggin’, and a broadside fired. The way I gave it her astonished even myself. Nelson himself could scarce ha’ done it better! Well, she struck her colours at the first broadside, an’ somehow—I never could make out exactly how—we was sittin’ on the stump of a tree with her head on my rough unworthy buzzum. Think o’ that! Dan, her head—the head of a Angel! Give us your flipper, mate.”
“I congratulate you, Jenkins, with all my heart,” said Dan, grasping the seaman’s flipper, and giving it a hearty shake. “So now, I must look out for another best-man. Morel will do for me, I think, and you can have my brother Peter, no doubt. But could we not manage to have both weddings on the same day?”
“Impossible,” answered the seaman, promptly. “Couldn’t wait.”
“But we might compromise the matter. I might have mine a little sooner and you could have yours a little later.”
Still Jenkins shook his head. “Not fair-play,” he said. “All the advantage on your side. However, we might consider it. Hold a sort o’ drum-head court-martial over it, with Elise and Elspie as judges.”
When the said court-marital—as Dan called it—was held, the compromise was agreed to, and it was finally fixed that six weeks thereafter the two couples should be united in Ben Nevis Hall.
But the current of these parallel streams of true love was not yet destined to run smooth—as the next chapter will show.