“I am so glad!” she said, as she gently disengaged herself after he had kissed her at least a dozen times, “I am so glad that the mutiny was subdued without bloodshed—that you are safe and uninjured!”
“And what is still better, I trust that we will soon fall in with the boats,” said Marline. “I wore round about ten minutes ago.”
“Wore round? What is that?” inquired Alice.
“What? you, a sailor’s niece, don’t know what it is to wear ship!”
“How should I?” retorted Alice. “You know that I never took any interest in your salt-water phrases, nor much in any thing pertaining to the ocean.”
“Why then did you go to sea?”
The cheeks of the young girl were instantly covered with blushes. Her heart beat rapidly. She lowered her eyes and did not speak until she could muster sufficient resolution to lift them to the face of her interrogator. Then the glances of both met—a heaven of womanly tenderness in hers, and in his the deep, strong passion of the man.
She stepped toward him, placed both hands upon his arms and hiding her face in his bosom, said, in a tremulous voice:
“Why should I not acknowledge it? It was that I might be near you!”
“And Alice,” said he, “if you were not in this ship it would lose all attraction for me. God shield you from all harm,” he added, as a sudden indefinable presentiment for which he could not account, swept over his spirit, “and preserve you, that we may both be made happy.”