When we returned to our companions with the cask, and told them what it held, they gave us an eager and noisy welcome. We rummaged about until we found a sufficient number of cracked glasses and cups, and then we filled them with the fragrant, ruddy beverage.
“Miss Hatherton shall drink first,” said I, as I sat down beside her and handed her a glass.
My own I held up with a little nod, and she partly understood me. Such a roguish look twinkled in her eyes that I carried out my purpose.
“Attention!” I cried, standing up. “A toast, comrades! to my promised wife!”
With an earnestness that I liked, the men drank, one and all, and Flora smiled very prettily through her confusion and blushes.
“Ah, she’s a bonnie lady,” old Malcolm Cameron said bluntly.
“And with the spirit of a man,” added Luke Hutter.
I acknowledged these compliments with a bow as I sat down. Most of the drinking vessels were emptied and passed to Carteret to be filled. That done, at a sign from me he carried the cask to a closet at the other side of the room. Some of the men were bibulously inclined, and for Flora’s sake I had to be cautious.
Of a sudden Captain Rudstone rose, his handsome, stern face almost transformed by an expression of genial good will.
“Mr. Carew,” he began, “on such an occasion as this I feel that I must say a word. Indeed you have won a prize. ’Tis an old proverb that a man married is a man marred, but in you I see an exception. Were I a few years younger I should have ventured to enter the lists against you. I have knocked about the world, and I can pay Miss Hatherton no higher compliment than to say that she is equally fitted to be queen of a London drawing room or mistress of a factor’s humble house. But enough. I wish you every prosperity and happiness, and a long career in the service of the company.”