Part 9

A look of great determination came over Ruddle's face, and the smile died out of it.

"If I married, and I don't believe I did, when I was dotty through bein' hit on the crust, I ain't goin' to acknowledge it," said he with firmness. "I ain't the same man, that's obvious. And as I don't know the lady, the situation would be uncommon awkward for her and for me, and I think the best thing is for nothin' further to be said."

The skipper was very doubtful as to whether this was the proper way to look at it, and he expressed a very decided opinion on what the lady would say.

"I'm a married man myself," said Gray, "and I own I have a wife that is a jewel, but what she would say if I said I didn't know her, owing to some accident at sea, fair inspires me with dread. I don't believe Mrs. Ruddle will put up with it, and you'll have a holy time in front of you if she as much as hears that you think of trying it on."

But Ruddle said he didn't care, and that he wasn't going to have a wife foisted on him, so there. And down below Chadwick was breaking the dreadful news to Susan Ruddle that her husband did not know her or anyone else, and that he had become a sailor with a remarkably unorthodox vocabulary, and when this was driven into the poor woman's mind she screamed, and almost fainted again.

"Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do!" she cried. And then Mr. Blithers, who had never liked Ruddle, said that he would put it right.

"I don't believe a word he says if he says he doesn't know us," said Blithers angrily. "I always thought he was not the man he wanted us to think. And as for that story of his, I never believed that either. I shall go on deck and tell him that he is a scoundrel."

He did so. He crawled to the poop and emerged into the gale in which Ruddle was fairly revelling.

"Ruddle, you are a scoundrel," said Blithers. "I always thought so, and now I know it."

Ruddle inspected him with great curiosity.

"I'm a scoundrel, am I?" asked the new mate. "And what may you be?"

"Don't you dare say you don't know me, Ruddle," said Blithers.

"I know you," said Ruddle. "I can tell by the cut of your jib that you are an infernal humbug of the first water. Get out of this before I hurt you!"

"I won't," said Blithers furiously. "I won't till you say what you are going to do about your wife, who is weeping about you now, and crying to you to come to her."

"If you don't stop tellin' lies about me and ladies I'll throw you down into the cabin," said Ruddle.

"Hypocrite, liar, and man of sin, I defy you!" said Blithers; and the next minute Ruddle had him by the neck and threw him into the cabin.

"Stand from under," said Ruddle, and Blithers howled and fell, and turned over and over as he went, and at last came to a stop at the feet of Chadwick and the disconsolate wife.

"He threw me down, and he knew me," screamed Blithers. "He said, 'I know you, and you are a humbug.' He's just pretending."

"I don't believe it, Mr. Blithers," wailed the unhappy woman. "He was always a good judge of character even when he was at sea before. But I want to see him myself. I must, and I will. He'll know me. Oh, he must know me or I shall die!"

The skipper came down below.

"Oh, captain," said Susan Ruddle, "I want to see him. If he is the mate now, as you say, you must order him to come to me at once."

"I will," said the skipper. "It's odd I never thought of that before, when he as good as said he declined to hear any more argument about wives and women, and let on that the girl that reckoned to marry him was likely to be disapp'inted. You cheer up, ma'am. I'll send him down sharp."

"Leave me here alone," said the discarded wife, who in spite of her grief looked as pretty as a picture. "Leave me alone, please."

Chadwick withdrew, and dragged the raging Blithers with him. As Chadwick said, if anyone could bring Ruddle back to a sense of the lost period of his youth, it was his wife, and if she failed it was likely to be a very remarkable business and no mistake about it. He told Blithers of other cases of the kind of which he had heard. On the whole, Chadwick was optimistic. But Blithers shook his head, and rather hoped that Ruddle would remain a sailor for the rest of his life.

"I never thought he was fit to be a missionary," said Blithers. "And instead of him, I ought to be looked on as the chief here."

There was a sharp argument going on on deck in the meantime.

"I'll take charge of her, Mr. Ruddle," said the skipper, "and you can go below and see your wife, who is naturally anxious to see you."

"I ain't in the least anxious to go below," said Ruddle. "In fact, if it's all the same to you I'd rather stay here till she's out of the way."

"I don't like to think that you are a coward," observed the skipper severely, "but I'll be compelled to think so if you don't go at once and square things up in some sort of shape."

"Well," said Ruddle, "that's all very well for you, sir, that ain't caught in the same nip. But I don't want to go. I don't know the lady, and I'm naturally shy, and the cold perspiration pours off me at the thought of it."

"I order you to do your duty," said the 'old man.' "I order you to go below and soothe the lady."

"Oh Lord, oh, I say, I won't," stammered Ruddle. "I'd rather stay on deck all night."

"You won't? That's mutiny, Mr. Ruddle. It is disobeyin' orders, it is refusing duty. I'd be very sorry to use severe measures with you, but if you don't go I'll have you put in irons and carried to her."

"You don't mean that, sir, do you?"

"I mean it," said the skipper. "But I never did see such a man. I never knew anyone so unwillin' to see a pretty woman before."

"Oh, is she pretty?" asked Ruddle anxiously.

"Rather," said the 'old man.' "Oh, a regular beauty, and no fatal error. Dixon and Smith were both off their nuts about her when you came on board."

"What's she like?" asked Ruddle. "Tell me what she is like."

"Well, for one thing, she has got the most beautiful golden hair," said the skipper; "and from the way it's coiled, tier on tier on her head, I should reckon she can sit on it easy."

Ruddle sighed.

"Well, that seems all right," he said. "I was afraid I might have landed one of the half-bald kind I hate. I like 'em fair too. But go on, sir."

"Her eyes are a very superior kind of blue," said the poetical skipper; "and in my judgment they don't stay the same kind of blue all the time, but changes like the sea when clouds obscure the heavens in a squall. I reckon she's mostly sweet tempered, but if you riled her it would not surprise me to learn that she could stand up for herself."

"That's the way I like 'em," said Ruddle. "I never could abide the milk-and-water woman. But is she big or little?"

"Neither one nor the other," returned the skipper. "Speaking as a judge of them, I should say she is as she should be, not too little, not too big, but what you might call sizeable. And her complexion, of which I'm a judge, is quite remarkable. Oh, on consideration I should state with some firmness that she's very pretty."

"You comfort me a good deal," said Ruddle; "and if you still insist on my seein' her, I'll do it at once."

"It's my duty to insist, Ruddle," said the 'old man.' "So down you go, and mind you behave. And don't be too stand-offish, for I can't abide to see tears, and never could, and as a result I've had much trouble in my life. And when it's fixed up, come and tell me all about it."

And Ruddle started to see his wife with slow, reluctant steps.

"It's my firm belief that nothin' of this nature ever happened before," said Ruddle, "and my bein' nervous seems tolerable natural. I wonder, oh, I do wonder, if I shall like her!"

He descended the companion as slowly as if he were going to execution.

"Oh, Tom, Tom," cried the lady who was, they said, his wife, and a cold shiver ran down Ruddle's back. He did not dare to lift his eyes, and stood there like a big schoolboy who has got into sad trouble and is much ashamed of himself.

"Oh, Tom, don't you know me?" cried Susan. She made an attempt to rise, which was very promptly frustrated by the gale. Ruddle lifted his eyes at last.

"If you please, ma'am, I don't think I do," said he. Then he added in desperation--"At least, not well, ma'am."

The situation was too desperate for screaming, and Susan accordingly did not scream. She became dignified.

"I have been your wife for three years, and now you say you don't know me. If you don't know me, who am I, and what am I? Tom, sir, Mr. Ruddle, I pause for a reply."

Poor Ruddle shook his head very sadly.

"It's mighty awkward, I own," he said after some reflection; "and I don't know what to do about it. I'm very sorry I don't know you, but I can't say I do, much as I'd like to oblige a lady that I'm bound to respect, as, according to the other gents in long-tailed coats, I'm married to her. But they say I was a missionary, and now I'm a seaman again, and maybe you don't care for those that follow the sea."

"I don't mind anything," sobbed Susan, who was wondering if she might tell her husband that she loved him and would not care if he were a dustman. But somehow it did not seem quite proper to speak in that way to a man who didn't know her.

"Oh, please, don't cry," said Ruddle in great distress. "When a lady cries I never know what to do."

"I think I'm almost glad you d-don't," said Susan, and she smiled on him through her tears, and looked very beautiful.

"The 'old man' was right," said Tom Ruddle, "she's as beautiful as a 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.