A Marriage at Sea

by William Clark Russell

I approached the captain with Grace's hand under my arm.

"She has her answering pennant flying," he exclaimed, letting fall his glass to accost me, and he called to the second mate to haul down our signal. "I believe she will receive you, Mr. Barclay. She's a gentleman's yacht, and a fine boat at that. So much the better. After the Carthusian," he added, with a proud look at his noble ship, "I dare say you mightn't have found the first thing we fell in with perfectly agreeable."

"Where do you think she's bound, captain?"

"I should say undoubtedly heading for the English Channel," he answered.

"There should be no difficulty in transferring us, I think," said I, with a glance at the sea.

"Bless me, no," he answered, "get her close to leeward, and the ship'll make a breakwater for Mrs. Barclay."

"Captain Parsons, what can I say that will in any measure express my gratitude to you? May I take it that a letter addressed to you to the care of the owners of the Carthusian will be sure to reach you on your return?"

"Oh, yes. But never you mind about that. What I've done has given me pleasure, and I hope that you'll both live long, and that neither of you by a single look or word will ever cause the other to regret that you fell into the hands of Captain Parsons of the good ship Carthusian."

Grace gave him a sweet smile. Now that it seemed we were about to leave his ship she could gaze at him without alarm. He broke from its to deliver an order to the second mate, who re-echoed his command in a loud shout. In a moment a number of sailors came racing aft and fell to rounding-in, as it is called, upon the main and main-top sailbraces with loud and hearty songs, which were re-echoed out of the white hollows aloft and combined with the splashing noise of waters and the small music of the wind in the rigging into a true ocean concert for the ear. The machinery of the braces brought the sails on the main to the wind; the ship's way was almost immediately arrested, and she lay quietly sinking and rising with a sort of hush of expectation along her decks, which nothing disturbed save the odd farmyard-like sounds of the live stock somewhere forward.

The steamer was now rapidly approaching us, and by this time without the aid of a glass I made her out to be a fine screw yacht of some three hundred and fifty tons, painted black, with a yellow funnel forward of amidships, which gave her the look of a gunboat. She had a charthouse, or some such structure near her bridge, that was very liberally glazed, and blinding flashes leapt from the panes of glass as she rolled to and from the sun as though she were quickly firing cannon charged with soundless and smokeless gunpowder. A figure paced the filament of bridge that was stretched before her funnel. He wore a gold band round his hat and brass buttons on his coat. Two or three men leaned over the head rail viewing us as they approached, but her quarter-deck was deserted. I could find no hint of female apparel or of the blue serge of the yachtsman.