"At the first opportunity that comes along, I'll transfer you. Can't do more. Can't send ye home in one of my quarter-boats, you know."
"But your mates have no instructions."
"They shall have all necessary instructions presently. And how do you feel, mem, after that little job below? Being married 's a trying performance. I've known men who'd have been married twenty times over if it hadn't been for the ceremony."
He gazed with an air of satisfaction at her wedding ring, and then applied his eye afresh to the sextant. My mind was rendered easier by his promise to repeat his earlier instructions to his mates, and until the luncheon bell rang, Grace and I continued to pace the deck. By this time the news of our having been married had travelled forwards, conveyed to the Jacks and to the steerage passengers, as I took it, by one of the stewards. It was the sailors' dinner hour, and I could see twenty of them on the forecastle staring at us as one man, whilst every time we advanced to the edge of the poop, where the rail protected the deck, there was a universal upturning of bearded, rough faces, with much pointing and nodding among the women.
After all this the luncheon table was something of a relief, despite the rows of people at it. I was afraid from the manner in which Captain Parsons from time to time regarded us that he was rehearsing a speech, a menace I could not think of without silent horror since it must inevitably compel a reply from me. However, nothing was said, and we lunched in peace, much looked at, particularly by the ladies, as you will suppose; but I found Grace easier under this inspection than I should have dared to hope; possibly she was now getting used to it. She divided her conversation between me and Mr. Higginson, who sat at her left, and she wore a very sweet and easy manner, charming with its girlish grace of dignity. Her breeding showed to perfection at that time, I thought. It was probably rendered more defined to my mind by the looks and behaviour of the other ladies, all of them, to be sure, a very good sort of homely, friendly people, with something of the true lady indeed in Mrs. Barstow.
CHAPTER XIII
THE MERMAID
Nothing was said about the marriage.
The privacy of the affair lay as a sort of obligation of silence upon the kindly-natured passengers, and though, as I have said, they could not keep their eyes off us, their conversation was studiedly remote from the one topic about which we were all thinking. Lunch was almost ended when I spied the second mate peering down at us through the glass of the sky-light, and in a few minutes he descended the cabin ladder, and said something in a low voice to the captain.