ask one fair
enquirer.

"Mrs. Church," said the ex-mariner, simply.

"Yes, of course," said the matron; "but was it love at first sight, or
did it grow on you before you knew it?"

Captain Barber blushed. "It growed on me afore I knew it," he replied,
fervently.

"I suppose," said a lady of a romantic turn of mind, "that you didn't
know what was happening at first?"

"I did not, ma'am," agreed the Captain, in trembling tones. "Nobody was
more surprised than wot I was."

"How strange," said two or three voices.

They regarded him tenderly, and the youngest bridesmaid, a terrible
child of ten, climbed up on his knee and made audible comparisons
between the two bridegrooms, which made Mr. Gibson smile.

"Time we started," said Mrs. Banks, raising her voice above the din.
"Cap'in Barber, you and Mr. Gibson and the other gentlemen had better
get to the church."

The men got up obediently, and in solemn silence formed up in the little
passage, and then started for the church some two hundred yards distant,
the crew of the _Foam_ falling in behind unchallenged.

To this day Captain Barber does not know how he got there, and he
resolutely declines to accept Captain Niblett's version as the mere
offspring of a disordered imagination. He also denies the truth of a
statement circulated in the town that night that, instead of replying
to a leading question in the manner plainly laid down in the Church
Service, he answered, "I suppose so."

He came out of the church with a buzzing in his ears and a mist before
his eyes. Something was clinging to his arm, which he tried several
times to shake off. Then he discovered that it was Mrs. Barber.

Of the doings of the crew of the _Foam_ that night it were better not to
speak. Suffice it to say that when they at length boarded their ship Tim
was the only one who still possessed a hat, and in a fit of pride at the
circumstance, coupled, perhaps, with other reasons, went to bed in it.
He slept but ill, however, and at 4 A. M., the tide being then just on
the ebb, the only silk hat in the forecastle went bobbing up and down on
its way to the sea.

CHAPTER XXII.

A FINE October gave way to a damp and dreary November; a month of mists
and fogs, in which shipping of all sizes and all nations played blind
man's buff at sea, and felt their way, mere voices crying in the
wilderness, up and down the river. The _Swallow_, with a soul too large
for its body, cannoned a first-cl