‘The boat comes down and she gives the message, and then Tom says,
‘“We got something nice for you, Miry.”
‘“For me?” says Mirandy, shaking her curls. “What can that be?”
‘“We’ve brought your young man. He’m come to fetch you after all,” says Tom.
‘We pokes up Mr. Harris from the bottom of the boat, and then, sir, they two has their fust look at one another.’
‘By Jove, John!’ I said, ‘that must have been a moment! What happened?’
‘I never see’d anybody’s face, man or woman, change like Miry’s did, sir. What she had expected him to be like I don’t know; but not what he was like then, I be sure. And fust one o’ us laughs, and then another, till the boat’s crew were busting their sides. Mr. Harris draws hisself together, and looks at us in that blinky, half-puzzled way, and fust one chap looks shamed and stops, and then another, till there was silence. Then he looks down again at Mirandy, and she laughs and gets red, and a funny look, pitiful like, comes into her face, and she gets scarlet red, and stretches out her arms. We lifts him down, and she helps ’im into her boat, and she wipes the blood from his face, and he puts his arm round her, for I reckon he’d ’ad about enough o’ it. Then the boy rows them ashore, and we watches her ’elping him up the rocks, till we loses sight o’ them. And then, sir, we sets sail for home.
‘And that be the way, sir, that Mr. Harris come to Lundy Island for his wife. And I reckon he deserved her! Don’t you think so, sir?’
‘He did,’ I said warmly, ‘if ever a man did. Many a man has dared a lot for the sake of a girl, but I think Mr. Harris has earned a place among the bravest of them. He might well have died that night, and he must have known the lifeboat wouldn’t put back for him.’
‘Yes, sir. He did, o’ course. It were kill or cure, and he knowed it. I reckon he felt ’twere the only way to get there, so there it was! But ’twas all right. He stayed to Lundy, and Parson Heaven, who owned the island then, married them. And that’s the way Mr. Harris got his bride, sir.’