“I suppose,” said a lady of a romantic turn of mind, “that you didn’t know what was happening at first?”
“I did not, ma’am,” agreed the Captain, in trembling tones. “Nobody was more surprised than wot I was.”
“How strange,” said two or three voices.
They regarded him tenderly, and the youngest bridesmaid, a terrible child of ten, climbed up on his knee and made audible comparisons between the two bridegrooms, which made Mr. Gibson smile.
“Time we started,” said Mrs. Banks, raising her voice above the din. “Cap’in Barber, you and Mr. Gibson and the other gentlemen had better get to the church.”
The men got up obediently, and in solemn silence formed up in the little passage, and then started for the church some two hundred yards distant, the crew of the Foam falling in behind unchallenged.
To this day Captain Barber does not know how he got there, and he resolutely declines to accept Captain Niblett’s version as the mere offspring of a disordered imagination. He also denies the truth of a statement circulated in the town that night that, instead of replying to a leading question in the manner plainly laid down in the Church Service, he answered, “I suppose so.”
He came out of the church with a buzzing in his ears and a mist before his eyes. Something was clinging to his arm, which he tried several times to shake off. Then he discovered that it was Mrs. Barber.
Of the doings of the crew of the Foam that night it were better not to speak. Suffice it to say that when they at length boarded their ship Tim was the only one who still possessed a hat, and in a fit of pride at the circumstance, coupled, perhaps, with other reasons, went to bed in it. He slept but ill, however, and at 4 A. M., the tide being then just on the ebb, the only silk hat in the forecastle went bobbing up and down on its way to the sea.