I promised this and other things, doubtless, at the time. But before we had completed the conversation about our future life—which indeed supplied us with endless subjects of interest—the great island wonder-sign appeared. A shout—a rush of excited people past our hut told of a ship in sight. We were down at the beach nearly as soon as the others, and as a long, low barque came up before the wind, something told me that she was the Florentia.
A boat—a whaleboat, with a kanaka crew—put off soon after she was at anchor, and in the tall man at the steer-oar, whose commanding figure, even at that distance, I seemed to know, there was no difficulty in identifying our old friend Captain Carryall.
Directly he jumped ashore, a dozen of the islanders dashed into the surf and ran the boat up on the beach. Our recognition was mutual.
"Well, young fellow!" he said, "I've been hunting you up half over the South Seas. Wherever have you stowed yourself all this time? Why, what a man you've grown—a couple of inches taller than me, and I'm no pony. Brown as a berry, too! You'll have to come home with me this trip. Your old man's beginning to get anxious about you—and you know he's not much in that line—and your mother and sisters."
"Captain Carryall," I said, "there's no necessity for more reasons. I'm going to Sydney with you if you'll give me a passage."
"Half a dozen if you want it," quoth the jolly sailor. "And now I must have a word with my friends. Anybody been married since I was here last; no Quintals—no Millses! Mary, how's this? Dorcas—Grace—Mercy Young, I'm ashamed of you. And Miranda! Nobody run away with you yet? I see I must take you to Sydney and show you at a Government House ball. Then they'd see what a Pitcairn girl was like."
"You may do that yet," I said, "for, seriously, Miranda is now Mrs. Hilary Telfer. We have been married more than a month."
The captain could not refrain from giving a prolonged whistle at this announcement, which certainly appeared to take him by surprise. However, he rallied with ease and celerity, and addressing Miranda, whose hand he took as he spoke, said, "My dear! let me congratulate the son of my old friend, Captain Telfer, upon his marriage with the best, cleverest, and prettiest girl I have fallen across in all my wanderings. I don't suppose you have any great amount of capital to begin life with; but if two young people like you don't manage to find some path to fortune in a country like Australia, I'm a Dutchman. He needs to be a good fellow, and a man all round, to be worthy of Miranda Christian; but he can't help, as the son of his father and his mother, being all that, and more. So now, my dear! you must let me kiss you, as your husband's old friend, and wish you all happiness."
Miranda blushed as the warm-hearted fellow folded her in his arms, but submitted with becoming grace; and leaving her among her young friends, he and I strolled away towards our hut to talk over affairs more at leisure.
"Well, youngster!" said he, laying his hand on my shoulder, "I suppose you've had enough island life for a while, and won't be sorry to see Sydney Heads again. Nor I either. I've been out fifteen months this time, and that's rather long to be away from one's home and picaninnies. They'll be glad to see your face again at Rose Bay, I'll be bound. But they certainly will be taken aback when you turn up as a married man. Nineteen times out of twenty it's a mistake to tie one's self up for life at your age. But all depends upon getting the right woman, and Miranda is the one woman in a thousand that a man might be proud to marry, whether he was rich or poor, and to work and wear out his life for all his days. I've known her since she was a baby, and, taking her all round, I don't know her equal anywhere. It seems queer to say so, considering her birth and bringing up. But these Pitcairners are well known to be the best and finest women, in all womanly ways, that the world can show. And your wife is, and has always been, the flower of the flock."