I grasped the captain's hand. I knew that I had secured a powerful ally; and though I felt so secure in the wisdom of my choice that no disapprobation of family and friends would have had power to affect me, yet, in such matters, it is well to have a friend at court, and the captain's reputation for sense and sagacity stood so high, that I felt not only my relatives, but my acquaintances and friends, would be strongly swayed by his judgment.
"Now that we've got so far," he said, "you had better make your arrangements to sail with me on Sunday morning; this is Thursday, but my passengers want to see the island and the people of whom they have heard so much."
"Passengers!" I said. "How many? and where from?"
"Well, I picked them up at Honolulu. Half a dozen, and very nice people, too. They came in an English yacht that went to San Francisco for them, and they wanted to see Australia, and so came with me. They're rather big people at home, I believe, though they're very quiet, and give themselves no airs."
"Any ladies?"
"There are two married couples, and a young lady, with her brother."
"That's very serious, captain," said I. "I don't quite know how Miranda will get on with travelling Englishwomen—they're rather difficult sometimes."
"Miranda will get on with any one," answered the captain, with a decided air. "She will sit on my right hand, as a bride, and no one in my ship will show her less than proper respect. Anyhow, these people are not that sort. You'll see she's all ready to start on Sunday morning. 'The better the day, the better the deed.'"
So the captain went to pay a visit to the people of the settlement, among whom his free, pleasant manner and generous bearing had made him most popular. The girls crowded around him, laughing and plying him with questions about the commissions he had promised to execute for them, and the presents he had brought. These attentions he never omitted. Full of curiosity they were, too, about the English ladies on board. "How they were dressed?" "How long they would stay in Sydney?" "What they would think of the poor Pitcairn girls?" and so on.
With the elders he told of the whaleships he had spoken, and of their cargoes of oil—of the Quintals, or Youngs, Mills, or M'Coys who were harpooners and boat-steerers on board some of the Sydney whalers, and of the chances of their "lay" or share of profit being a good one. Besides all this, the captain consented to act as their ambassador to the Governor-General in Sydney, and lay before that potentate certain defects of their island administration—small, perhaps, in themselves, but highly important to the members of an isolated community. In addition to all this, he (as I heard afterwards) specially attended to my marriage with Miranda, of which he highly approved; telling the old pastor and the elders of the community that he had known my father for ever so many years; that he was highly respected now, when retired, but had been well known in the South Seas and New Zealand many years ago as the captain of the Orpheus, one of the most successful whalers that ever sailed through Sydney Heads.