A Marriage at Sea

by William Clark Russell

"You see, Mr. Barclay, if the names are wrong, the marriage is wrong."

"There'll be nothing wrong in this marriage," said I, "if the rights of it are to be dependent merely upon the genuineness of our names. But now, let me put this question to you: in officiating as you propose, will you not be accepting a certain legal risk?"

"As how?" he exclaimed.

"You will be marrying a young lady who is under age, knowing, as I repeat now, and was bound to tell you at the start, that her guardian objects to the alliance."

"There are no guardians at sea," he said, "in the sense of your young lady's aunt. I'm her guardian whilst she's aboard my ship, and as I said before, so I say again, I give my consent seeing the situation she's put herself in, and understanding that it's my duty to help her out of it."

I swallowed a laugh, and changed the subject by asking him to tell me about the couples he had married, and so in chatting, three-quarters of an hour passed, at the expiration of which time I shook him by the hand and went to bed.

Mr. Tooth tried hard to keep me awake that he might satisfy his curiosity; he had vaguely heard I was to be married next day, and wished for the story of my elopement at first hand. But I was dog tired, and no sooner did my head press the pillows than I answered him with snores.

I slept right through the night, and when I awoke, Mr. Tooth was shaving himself, and the cabin was brilliant with sunshine whitened to a finer glory yet by the broad surface of milk-white froth that was rushing past the ship. There was plainly a noble sailing breeze blowing, and the vessel was lying well down to it, with a sort of humming and tingling throughout the whole body of her. I made haste to shave, fencing with Mr. Tooth's questions, as he plied them out of a mouth that yawned darkly amid the soapsuds with which he had covered his cheeks, and then hastened into the saloon to look for Grace and take her on deck. The good-humoured little stewardess, however, told me she was not yet up, though it wanted but twenty minutes to eight, on which I shot through the companion into the windy splendour of the grandest ocean morning that ever set a man fresh from his bed blinking.

The ship was heeling to it as a yacht might; her yards were braced forward, and the snow at her forefoot soared and blew away in smoke to the sliding irresistible thrust of her sharp metal stem. The sea for leagues and leagues rolled blue, foaming, brilliant; wool-like clouds, lovely with prismatic glitterings in their skirts, as they sailed from the sun, were speeding into the south-east. The whole life of the world seemed to be in that morning—in the joyous sweep of the blue wind, in the frolicsome frothing of each long blue ridge of rolling sea, in the triumphant speeding of the ship sliding buoyant from one soft foam-freckled hollow to another.

I drew a deep breath. Ha! thought I, if it were always like this now, and New Zealand not so distant.