Part 30 (2/2)

”Half a dozen if you want it,” quoth the jolly sailor. ”And now I must have a word with my friends. Anybody been married since I was here last; no Quintals--no Millses! Mary, how's this? Dorcas--Grace--Mercy Young, I'm ashamed of you. And Miranda! n.o.body run away with you yet? I see I must take you to Sydney and show you at a Government House ball. Then they'd see what a Pitcairn girl was like.”

”You may do that yet,” I said, ”for, seriously, Miranda is now Mrs.

Hilary Telfer. We have been married more than a month.”

The captain could not refrain from giving a prolonged whistle at this announcement, which certainly appeared to take him by surprise. However, he rallied with ease and celerity, and addressing Miranda, whose hand he took as he spoke, said, ”My dear! let me congratulate the son of my old friend, Captain Telfer, upon his marriage with the best, cleverest, and prettiest girl I have fallen across in all my wanderings. I don't suppose you have any great amount of capital to begin life with; but if two young people like you don't manage to find some path to fortune in a country like Australia, I'm a Dutchman. He needs to be a good fellow, and a man all round, to be worthy of Miranda Christian; but he can't help, as the son of his father and his mother, being all that, and more.

So now, my dear! you must let me kiss you, as your husband's old friend, and wish you all happiness.”

Miranda blushed as the warm-hearted fellow folded her in his arms, but submitted with becoming grace; and leaving her among her young friends, he and I strolled away towards our hut to talk over affairs more at leisure.

”Well, youngster!” said he, laying his hand on my shoulder, ”I suppose you've had enough island life for a while, and won't be sorry to see Sydney Heads again. Nor I either. I've been out fifteen months this time, and that's rather long to be away from one's home and picaninnies.

They'll be glad to see your face again at Rose Bay, I'll be bound. But they certainly will be taken aback when you turn up as a married man.

Nineteen times out of twenty it's a mistake to tie one's self up for life at your age. But all depends upon getting the right woman, and Miranda is the one woman in a thousand that a man might be proud to marry, whether he was rich or poor, and to work and wear out his life for all his days. I've known her since she was a baby, and, taking her all round, I don't know her equal anywhere. It seems queer to say so, considering her birth and bringing up. But these Pitcairners are well known to be the best and finest women, in all womanly ways, that the world can show. And your wife is, and has always been, the flower of the flock.”

I grasped the captain's hand. I knew that I had secured a powerful ally; and though I felt so secure in the wisdom of my choice that no disapprobation of family and friends would have had power to affect me, yet, in such matters, it is well to have a friend at court, and the captain's reputation for sense and sagacity stood so high, that I felt not only my relatives, but my acquaintances and friends, would be strongly swayed by his judgment.

”Now that we've got so far,” he said, ”you had better make your arrangements to sail with me on Sunday morning; this is Thursday, but my pa.s.sengers want to see the island and the people of whom they have heard so much.”

”Pa.s.sengers!” I said. ”How many? and where from?”

”Well, I picked them up at Honolulu. Half a dozen, and very nice people, too. They came in an English yacht that went to San Francisco for them, and they wanted to see Australia, and so came with me. They're rather big people at home, I believe, though they're very quiet, and give themselves no airs.”

”Any ladies?”

”There are two married couples, and a young lady, with her brother.”

”That's very serious, captain,” said I. ”I don't quite know how Miranda will get on with travelling Englishwomen--they're rather difficult sometimes.”

”Miranda will get on with any one,” answered the captain, with a decided air. ”She will sit on my right hand, as a bride, and no one in my s.h.i.+p will show her less than proper respect. Anyhow, these people are not that sort. You'll see she's all ready to start on Sunday morning. 'The better the day, the better the deed.'”

So the captain went to pay a visit to the people of the settlement, among whom his free, pleasant manner and generous bearing had made him most popular. The girls crowded around him, laughing and plying him with questions about the commissions he had promised to execute for them, and the presents he had brought. These attentions he never omitted. Full of curiosity they were, too, about the English ladies on board. ”How they were dressed?” ”How long they would stay in Sydney?” ”What they would think of the poor Pitcairn girls?” and so on.

With the elders he told of the whales.h.i.+ps he had spoken, and of their cargoes of oil--of the Quintals, or Youngs, Mills, or M'Coys who were harpooners and boat-steerers on board some of the Sydney whalers, and of the chances of their ”lay” or share of profit being a good one. Besides all this, the captain consented to act as their amba.s.sador to the Governor-General in Sydney, and lay before that potentate certain defects of their island administration--small, perhaps, in themselves, but highly important to the members of an isolated community. In addition to all this, he (as I heard afterwards) specially attended to my marriage with Miranda, of which he highly approved; telling the old pastor and the elders of the community that he had known my father for ever so many years; that he was highly respected now, when retired, but had been well known in the South Seas and New Zealand many years ago as the captain of the _Orpheus_, one of the most successful whalers that ever sailed through Sydney Heads.

”Captain Telfer of the _Orpheus_!” said one of the oldest men of the group, ”I remember him well. I was cast away on Easter Island the time the _Harriet_ was wrecked in a hurricane. He gave me a free pa.s.sage to Tahiti, a suit of clothes, and ten dollars when I left the s.h.i.+p. He wanted me to finish the voyage with him and go to Sydney. I was sorry afterwards I didn't. He was a fine man, and a better seaman never trod plank. No wonder Hilary is such a fine chap. I can see the likeness now.

I don't hold with our young women going off this island in a general way, but Miranda is a lucky girl to have Captain Telfer's son for a husband.” All this the captain told me afterwards with slight embellishments and variations of his own.

My reputation had fairly gone before, but this light thrown on my parentage placed me in a most exalted position--next to their spiritual pastor and master, before whom they bowed in genuine respect and reverence. Perhaps there is no man in the whole world more honoured and admired in the South Seas than the captain of a s.h.i.+p. And now that the name of my father's barque, once pretty well known south of the line, had been recalled from the past, every doubt as to the future of Miranda and myself was set at rest.

We were invested, so to speak, with the blessing of the whole community, and began our modest preparations with added cheerfulness and resolve.

In the afternoon we saw a boat put off from the _Florentia_ and the visitors land. They were five in number. We could see them walk over to the village, where they were met by some of the princ.i.p.al people and a few of the women and girls. We had been making ready for our voyage, and having finished our simple meal, sat in the shade of our orange tree, near the door, and awaited the strangers whom I judged rightly that curiosity and the captain would bring to our dwelling.

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