James looked at the girl. She nodded her head.
"Is there a priest about here?" asked James.
"Yes. Why?" asked Black.
"Well, if you'll kindly send for him, he can marry us before we start."
Back of the northward station, on the ramp that rises sheer back from the beach like a table-land, there are a few cottages. These are occupied by the crews of the whaling station and their families. In one of them is a handsome woman with two little tots—happy-faced and smiling she is. But she seems a bit out of place in her surroundings. Mrs. James Smith they call her, and she is apparently very happy, very happy indeed, in spite of it all.
James Smith is the best gun pointer in the fleet, the best harpooner with the gun-firing harpoon. He is a sober, quiet, steady man, who has nothing now of the ship's officer about him. He never talks of wrecks. If some one starts a conversation regarding them—and they are much hoped for in the Falklands—he goes away.
Sometimes in Jack's saloon down at Stanley, he has been known to sit and stare out over the dark ocean, to sit and often mutter:
"Was it right, after all—was it worth while—was it?"
But he is a sober, quiet, industrious man, who goes about his duties without enthusiasm, without effort.