The merchant shook his head, and then suddenly a thought flashed upon
him, and he ran with joy upon his face and whispered eagerly to Amos
Green. Amos laughed, and strode across to the captain.

"It's time," said Ephraim Savage grimly.

Then the whisperers went to De Catinat. He sprang in the air and his
eyes shone with delight. And then they went down to Adele in her cabin,
and she started and blushed, and turned her sweet face away, and patted
her hair with her hands as woman will when a sudden call is made upon
her. And so, since haste was needful, and since even there upon the
lonely sea there was one coming who might at any moment snap their
purpose, they found themselves in a few minutes, this gallant man and
this pure woman, kneeling hand in hand before the dying pastor, who
raised his thin arm feebly in benediction as he muttered the words which
should make them forever one.

Adele had often pictured her wedding to herself, as what young girl has
not? Often in her dreams she had knelt before the altar with Amory in
the temple of the Rue St. Martin. Or sometimes her fancy had taken her
to some of those smaller churches in the provinces, those little refuges
where a handful of believers gathered together, and it was there that
her thoughts had placed the crowning act of a woman's life. But when
had she thought of such a marriage as this, with the white deck swaying
beneath them, the ropes humming above, their only choristers the gulls
which screamed around them, and their wedding hymn the world-old anthem
which is struck from the waves by the wind? And when could she forget
the scene? The yellow masts and the bellying sails, the gray drawn face
and the cracked lips of the castaway, her father's gaunt earnest