picture, and just the kind I like. I don't think I could have bin'
very dotty when I married her, and I wish I remembered somethin'
about it. If I say I think she is pretty, I wonder whether she will
be mad and think it a liberty. I think I'll try. They mostly like
it."
He approached her slowly.
"If I don't know you, what may I call you?" he asked diffidently.
Mrs. Ruddle gave a gasp.
"Don't you know my name? Oh, how very dreadful! I'm Susan, and you
used to call me Dilly Duck."
"Did I?" asked Ruddle. "And why did I do that?"
Susan said she didn't know, but supposed that it was because he liked
her very much.
"But I like you very much now," said Ruddle, "I really do; and I
think you are very pretty, ma'am, if I may say so, and the situation
is very awkward. I hope I ain't too forward, which has never been my
way with ladies, I assure you."
As it had taken Susan over a year to encourage him to the point of
proposing, she felt sure that he was speaking the solid truth, and it
touched her deeply.
"I'm very glad you think I'm pretty," she said with the most charming
modesty. "If--oh, if you think so, perhaps you are not sorry that
you are married."
"But I don't feel married," urged Ruddle desperately, "and I don't
know what to do about it. It's by far the awkwardest situation I was
ever in by long chalks, and it beats me, it fair beats me."
But surely there was a way out, thought Susan, and she wondered
whether as his wife she might not suggest it.
"But you like me?"
"Oh, yes, to be sure," said Ruddle, "and I quite understand how I
came to marry you. That is, I can understand how I wanted to, but
what fair licks me is what you saw in me. Perhaps it was my bein' a
long-tailed parson. Was it, now?"
"Not in the least," said Susan stoutly, "it was because you were you."
"But now I ain't what I was, and you must find it very embarrassing,
ma'am."
"What I find embarrassing is your calling me 'ma'am,'" said Susan,
with a snap that made Ruddle see that the skipper was right in other
ways than his judgment of the lady's beauty.
"Very well," said Tom Ruddle in a great hurry, "I'll call you Susan
if you like."
"Of course I like," said Susan; "and if you like you can call me
Dilly Duck too."
But though Ruddle was much encouraged, he could not go so far as that
all at once.
"If you won't, you might at anyrate sit down near me," said the fair
Circe with the golden hair. And Tom sat down gingerly.
"I don't know what is to be done," said he in a melancholy way. "I
suppose you agree with me, ma'am,--Susan, I mean,--that it is very
awkward and most unusual? Looking it fair and square, I don't see a
way out, unless----"
"Unless what?" asked Susan, with her eyes on the deck. She herself
had an idea of the way out, but she wanted him to find it.
"It's very odd that I should feel as I do, as we have been married,"
said Ruddle; "but I'm that took aback by the facts as they show up
against my present lights, that I seem in a dream, like as if I had
sternway on me and was in a regular tangle. Tell me, when I was a
missionary was I much afraid of you?"
Susan sighed and took him by the arm.
"I think you were a little afraid sometimes, Tom, especially if I was
cross with you."
"Ah, I dessay," said her husband. "And if I was scared of you at
times when I knew you, it seems natural, don't it, that I should be
worse scared of you now that I don't?"
"But you aren't really frightened of me, darling, are you?" asked
Susan, once more turning on the water-works.
"When you cry and call me that," said Ruddle, "I don't know where I
am, and I want to----"
"You want to what?" asked Susan in the sweetest voice.
"I--I don't quite know," stammered Ruddle.
"I know," said Susan triumphantly.
"Oh, no, you can't," said Ruddle in great haste. "I'm certain you
can't, for it ain't possible."
But Susan lifted her sea-blue eyes to his and shook her head.
"I do know, Tom. You want to kiss me."
Tom gasped and stared at her. "Well, you are clever," he said, with
the greatest air of admiration. "I don't believe that any other
woman would have guessed it."
And Susan sat waiting.
"Well?" she said at last.
"Oh, may I?" asked Tom.
"Of course you may," said Susan, once more looking at the deck. And
he kissed her, and then took her in his arms while she wept.
"And you are sure you love me again?" she asked.
"It's most wonderful," said Tom, "but now I come to think of it, I
feel as if I had always loved you, and no other woman can as much as
get a look in. There was a girl in London that thought I was goin'
to tie up alongside, but she's away off it, and I'll never marry
anyone but you."
Susan wisely forbore at that moment to make any inquiries about this
other girl, of whom she had never heard till that moment, and she put
her golden head against her husband's shoulder.
"I think I am quite happy, Tom," she said, "though I am very sorry
you don't remember how happy we were when we were first married."
Tom shook his head.
"I'm sorry for that too," he replied, "but it can't be helped, and
we'll be happy yet if you really love me enough to marry me again."
"But we are married, Tom," said Susan.
"You may be," said Tom, "but I haven't the feelings of it, and I mean
to ask that long-tail to tie us up again, so that there can be no
mistake about it. What do you say?"
Susan said he was a darling, and that she loved him more than ever,
and was willing to be married to him a thousand times if he wanted it.
"And you don't mind my bein' a sailor instead of a missionary?" asked
Tom.
"I much prefer it, so long as you don't go to sea," said Susan; and
leaving that to be arranged later, Tom Ruddle called the curious
Chadwick from his cabin.
"I've fixed it up," said Tom triumphantly. "I've fixed it to rights,
sir. My wife is goin' to marry me again, and we'd be much obliged if
you would perform the ceremony."
"It seems very irregular," said Chadwick, "but considering the very
peculiar circumstances I've no objection to make. It is really very
wonderful. I congratulate you both. I must call the captain and
tell him about it."
When the second mate came on deck the 'old man' went below. As soon
as he grasped the situation he turned to Susan with a grin.
"You brought him to his bearings pretty quick, ma'am, and I
congratulate you. But then a pretty woman like you ain't the sort to
go long a-beggin'. I knew you'd fetch him! When I described you to
him, me bein' a judge of female beauty, I saw how it would be. Who's
goin' to do the new hitching?"
Mr. Chadwick said he was going to do it.
"It's the first time I ever married the same couple twice," he said;
and Brother Blithers sat in the background and said it was
uncanonical. But no one paid any attention to Blithers. The other
missionaries chipped in with their congratulations, and said that
they hoped Ruddle would still be one of them.
"Thank you, gentlemen," said Ruddle, "but I have too much admiration
for you to think I can be one of you again. I have a cousin that's a
shipowner, and when he finds that I'm alive and in my right sea
senses, he'll give me a ship, for though I've never been skipper of
anythin' yet, I hold a master's certificate. And my wife will go to
sea with me."
"Darling, I'll go anywhere with you," whispered Susan. And then they
were married, while the gale roared about them, and the good old
_Ocean Wave_ rode it out under a goose-winged main-topsail as
comfortably as a duck in a puddle.
"It's all very wonderful," said Ruddle, as he went on deck at four
o'clock to keep his watch. The 'old man' said that it was.
"All the same I knew she'd fetch you," said Gray. "I think the worst
of it is over. We'll be makin' sail in the mornin'. As this is your
weddin'-day, Mr. Ruddle, I'll keep your watch to-night."
"Thank you, sir," said Ruddle. "Lord, what a wonderful world it is."
Mrs. Ruddle said so too.
THE CAPTAIN OF THE _ULLSWATER_
There were enemies of Captain Amos Brown who said that he was a liar.
He certainly had a vivid imagination, or a memory for a more romantic
career than falls to the lot of most at sea or ashore.
"By the time we make Callao, Mr. Wardle," said the skipper to his new
mate, as they lay in Prince's Dock, Liverpool, "I expect to be able
to tell you something of my life, which has been a very remarkable
one."
"You don't say so, sir," said Mr. Wardle, who, as it happened, had
heard nothing about the skipper, and was innocently prepared to
swallow quite a deal. "You don't say so, sir."
"I do say so," replied the skipper. "It has been a most remarkable
career from first to last. Wonders happen to me, Mr. Wardle, so that
when I am at sea I just know that something will occur that is
strange. I have a collection of binoculars, with inscriptions on
them for saving lives at sea, that would surprise you. They have
been given me by almost every Government of any importance under the
sun."
"That must be very gratifyin', sir," said the mate.
"It gets monotonous," said the skipper with a yawn. "At times I wish
foreign Governments had more imagination. They never seem to think
two pair of glasses enough for any man. And the silver-mounted
sextants I possess are difficult to stow away in my house. If you
don't mind the inscription to me on it, I'll give you a sextant
presented to me by France, Mr. Wardle, if I can remember to bring it
with me from home next time."
Mr. Wardle said he should be delighted to own it, and said, further,
that the inscription would naturally give it an added interest. At
this the skipper yawned again, and said that he was tired of
inscriptions.
"The next lot I pick up I'll request not to give my name," he said.
"My wife, Mr. Wardle, gets tired of keeping a servant specially to
polish 'to Captain Brown,' with a lot of complimentary jaw to follow
that makes her tired. She knows what I am, Mr. Wardle, and doesn't
require to be reminded of it by falling over a gold-mounted sextant
every time she turns round. A woman even of a greedy mind can easily
get palled with sextants, and a woman sees no particular use in them
when they take up room that she wants to devote to heirlooms in her
family. Before we get to Callao I'll tell you all about my wife, and
how I came to marry her. It is a romantic story. She belongs to a
noble family. She is the most beautiful woman that you ever set eyes
on. I'll tell you all about it before we get to Callao. I've always
been a very attractive man to the other sex, Mr. Wardle. She's
rather jealous, too, though she belongs to a noble family. I
understand in noble families it isn't good taste to be jealous, but
she is. However, I must write to her now, or I shall have a letter
from her at Callao that would surprise you, if by that time I know
you well enough to show it to you. And now, what were you saying
about those three cases marked P.D., and consigned to Manuel Garcia?"
Mr. Wardle told him what he had been saying about the cases marked
P.D. and consigned to Manuel Garcia, and it was settled what was to
be done with them. The skipper said that he wished they were full of
his binoculars and diamond-mounted sextants, and also his gold
watches with fulsome inscriptions on them, and that they were
consigned to Davy Jones.
"And this is a letter for you, sir," said the mate. The skipper
opened it.
"From my wife," he said, and then he swore.
"Another pair of binoculars from the Swedish Government," he groaned.
"I shall write and say that I would rather have a suit of clothes,
and that if there must be an inscription on them will they put it
where it can't be seen. The German Government once did that for me,
but they put the inscription in good English on the collar, and I
found it very inconvenient, for strangers would come and breathe in
my neck while they read it."
Mr. Wardle went away to ask the second mate what he thought of the
skipper. He sighed, and the second mate laughed. The second mate
was an unbelieving dog and a merry one. When it came six o'clock
they had a wash, and put on clean clothes, and went up town together,
and had a friendly drink at a well-known public-house which was a
great resort for mates and second mates, though a skipper rarely put
his nose inside it.
"I wonder what kind of a chap the skipper is, after all," said
Humphries the second mate. "It seems to me, sir, that he is a holy
terror of a liar, and no mistake."
"Oh, I shouldn't like to say that," replied Wardle. "I do, however,
think he exaggerates and puts it on a bit thick. That isn't bein' a
liar. I daresay he has saved life at sea. He wouldn't have offered
me a silver-mounted sextant if he hadn't several."
"I shall believe you will get it when I see you with it," said Jack
Humphries. "In my opinion Captain Amos Brown is a first-class liar."
Perhaps he spoke a little too loudly for a public place, though that
public place was a billiard-room with four second mates playing a
four-handed game, and making as much row over it as if they were
picking up the bunt of the fore-sail in a gale of wind. He was
overheard by the only old man in the room.
"Did I hear you mention someone called Amos Brown?" asked the old
chap sitting next to him.
"I did, sir," said the second mate of the _Ullswater_. "Do you know
him?"
"I had an Amos Brown as an apprentice with me when I commanded the
_Samuel Plimsoll_," replied the old gentleman, "and he was a very
remarkable lad. I think I heard you say that this one was a liar?"
"I did," said Humphries; "though perhaps I shouldn't have done so, as
I'm second mate with him now, sir."
The old boy shook his head.
"I won't tell him. But it surely must be the same. The Brown I knew
was an awful liar, and I've seen many in my time, gentlemen."
He asked them to drink with him, and they did it willingly. To know
the one-time skipper of the old _Samuel Plimsoll_ was something worth
while, seeing that she had once held the record for a day's run. And
if his Brown was theirs it was a chance not to be missed. They took
their drinks, and asked him to tell them all about Amos Brown.
"He went overboard in a gale of wind and saved another boy who
couldn't swim," said the stranger, "and when we got them back on
board, and he could speak, the very first thing he said was that he
had seventeen medals from the Royal Humane Society for saving other
lives. Does that sound like your man?"
Wardle told him about the binoculars and gold watches and
silver-mounted sextants.
"Ah, he's the man," said the old skipper. "Don't you think because
he gasses that he hasn't pluck. I'd not be surprised to hear that
there is some truth in what he says. I've known one man with four
pairs of inscribed binoculars. I daresay Captain Brown has a pair or
two. When you see him, tell him that you met Captain Gleeson, who
used to command the _Samuel Plimsoll_. And as I'm goin' now, I don't
mind owning that I'm the man that has the four pairs of binoculars,
gentlemen."
He bade them good-night, and Humphries said when he had gone that he
was probably as big a liar as the skipper, and had never seen the
_Samuel Plimsoll_.
"And as for Brown bein' a hero," added the second mate, "I simply
don't believe it. A liar can't be brave."
This was a large and youthful saying, and Wardle, who was not so
young as his subordinate, had his doubts of it.
"I rather think the captain is all right," he said. "I'll ask him
to-morrow if he was ever in the _Samuel Plimsoll_."
They were at sea before he got a chance to do so.
"The _Samuel Plimsoll_? well, I should say so!" said the skipper.
"And you actually met dear old Gleeson! Why, Mr. Wardle, he was the
man that set me on makin' this collection of inscribed articles. Bar
myself he is the one man in the whole merchant service with more than
he can do with. His native town has a department in its museum
especially devoted to what he has given them in that way. His wife
refused to give them house-room, and I don't blame her. I saved most
of the crew in that dear old hooker at one time or another, went
overboard after them in gales of wind. They got to rely on me and
grew very careless. I often told them that I wouldn't go after any
more, but when you see a poor chap drownin' it is difficult to stay
in the dry and let him."
"Ah," said Wardle, "he did speak about your savin' one."
The skipper cast a quick look at him, and then laughed.
"One, indeed," he said contemptuously. "Why I saved the whole of the
mate's watch, the mate included; and on three other occasions I was
hauled out of my bunk to go after one of the starboard watch. The
only thing I have against old Gleeson is that he was jealous when he
saw I was likely to knock his collection of medals and binoculars
into a cocked-hat. One, indeed! I've saved seventy men, boys, and
women, by goin' in after 'em myself; and somethin' like forty-five
crews by skilful seamanship in the face of unparalleled difficulties.
I wish I could have a talk with Gleeson."
"He said you were one of the bravest lads he ever met, sir," said
Wardle.
The skipper's face softened.
"Did he now? Well, that was nice of him, but I think he might have
told you about more than one I saved."
"And he said he had only four pairs of binoculars given him by
foreign Governments," added Wardle.
"That is his false modesty," said Captain Brown. "He has an idea
that if he told the truth he would not be believed. I don't care who
doesn't believe me, Mr. Wardle. If surprisin' things occur to a man
why should he not relate them? There's my wife, for instance, one of
the nobility, a knight's daughter! I know men that wouldn't mention
it for fear of not bein' believed they had married so far above them.
She is the most beautiful woman in the three kingdoms, to say nothin'
of Europe. I know men that it would seem like braggin' in to say
that, but when you get to know me, and know that speakin' the truth
isn't out of gear with my natural modesty, you will see why I mention
it so freely."
In the course of the next few days Captain Amos Brown mentioned a
good many things freely that redounded to the credit of himself and
his family, and he did it so nicely, with such an engaging air of
innocent and delightful candour, that poor Wardle did not know
whether he was shipmates with the most wonderful man on earth or the
most magnificent liar.
"I don't know where I am," he confided in his junior.
"I know where _I_ am," said the graceless second greaser. "I am with
a skipper with as much jaw as a sheep's head, and if he said it was
raining I should take off my oilskins. He's the biggest braggart and
liar I ever met, sir."
"I cannot listen to you sayin' such things," said the mate.
"I beg your pardon for doin' so," replied Humphries, "but the 'old
man' is a scorcher, and I can't help seein' it."
To a less prejudiced observer it must have been obvious that there
were many fine qualities in Captain Amos Brown. He inspected the
cooking of the men's food at intervals which annoyed the cook and
kept him up to his work. When he went his rounds he saw that things
were shipshape even in the deckhouse. The men for'ard said he might
be a notorious liar, as they heard from the steward, but they said he
looked like a man and a seaman. Mr. Wardle found him as smart a
navigator as he had ever sailed with, and before long was learning
mathematics from him.
"No officer need be ashamed of takin' a wrinkle from me, Mr. Wardle,"
said the skipper, after giving him a lesson in star observations that
made the mate sit up. "The Astronomer Royal himself owned to me that
I could give him pounds and a beating at a great deal of mathematics.
I love it, there is something so fine and free about it. I go
sailin' over the sea of the calculus with both sheets aft. He is
goin' to publish some observations of mine about the imperfections of
the sextant. They were brought to my notice by my series of
silver-mounted ones. I'm inventin' a new one compensated for all
different temperatures."
And yet it was quite true that, as far as Wardle went with him, a
better and clearer-headed teacher could not be found.
"I shall end in believing every word he says," thought the mate.
And if the mate found him his master in navigation, Humphries found
that there wasn't a trick of practical seamanship that wasn't at his
finger-ends, from cutting out a jib to a double Matthew Walker on a
four-stranded rope, which the skipper could almost do with his eyes
shut.
"Everything is all the same to me, Mr. Humphries," said the skipper
calmly. "I'm a born pilot, and I can handle every rig as easy as if
I'd been born in 'em. I can sail a scow or a schooner, and every
kind of sailing-boat from a catamaran to an Arab dhow. And at steam
I'm just as good."
Humphries did not believe a word of it, and used to read up
old-fashioned seamanship in order to pose him. He never did, and the
most out-of-date sea-riddle was to the skipper as easy as slinging a
nun-buoy.
"He beats me, I own," said the second mate. "He's the best at
all-round sailorizin' that I ever sailed with."
The men for'ard said the same. And the bo'son, who was a very crusty
beast from Newcastle, was of opinion that what the 'old man' did not
know about ships was not worth knowing.
"I'm goin' to believe 'im hif so be 'e says 'e's bin to the moon,"
said one cockney. "But for hall we knows the 'old man' may not show
hup and shine as 'e does now w'en it's 'ard weather. I was shipmet
wiv a skipper once that was wonderful gassy so long's it was topmast
stuns'l weather, but when it blew a gale 'e crawled into 'is bunk
like a sick stooard, and there 'e stayed till the sun shone."
They soon had a chance of seeing whether the skipper was a
fair-weather sailor or not. They had taken an almighty time to get
to the south'ard of the Bay of Biscay, for it had been almost as calm
as a pond all the way from the Tuscar. Now the barometer began to
fall in a steady, business-like way that looked as if it meant work,
while a heavy swell came rolling up from the south. The dawn next
morning was what ladies would have called beautiful, for it was full
of wonderful colour, and reached in a strange glory right to the
zenith. It afforded no joy, artistic or otherwise, to anyone on
board the _Ullswater_, as she rolled in the swell with too little
wind to steady her. The watch below came out before breakfast, and
looked at the scarlet and gold uneasily. There was a tremendously
dark cloud on the horizon, and the high dawn above it was alone a
threat of wind. The clouds, that were lighted by the hidden sun,
were hard and oily; they had no loose edges, the colour was brilliant
but opaque. To anyone who could read the book of the sky the signs
were as easy as the south cone. They meant 'very heavy weather from
the south and west.' The skipper looked a deal more happy than he
had done before. His eyes were clear and bright; there was a ring in
his voice which encouraged everybody; he walked the poop rubbing his
hands as if he was enjoying himself, as he undoubtedly was. He
shortened the _Ullswater_ down in good time, but set his three
t'gallan's'ls over the reefed topsails, and hung on to them until
squalls began to come out of the south which threatened to save all
trouble of furling them. By noon the sun was out of sight under a
heavy grey pall, and the sea got up rapidly as the wind veered into
the west of south. An hour later it was blowing enough to make it
hard to hear anyone speak, and he roared the most dreadful and
awe-inspiring lies into the ear of his mate.
"This is goin' to be quite a breeze, Mr. Wardle," he shouted
joyously, "but I don't think the weather nowadays is ever what it was
when I was young. I've been hove to in the Bay for three weeks at a
time. And once we were on our beam ends for a fortnight, and all we
ate all that time was one biscuit each. I was so thin at the finish
that I had to carry weights in my pocket to keep myself from bein'
blown overboard. Oh, this is nothin'! We can hang on to this till
the wind is sou'-west, and then maybe we'll heave to."