ument, Richard,' he
answers at last, 'but I will leave it to her mother.' And when he said
that, I knew I had won; for, without her ever telling me, I knew her
mother was with us. If I had told him that, I would only have been
telling what he already guessed, as he told me that same night, later.

"Anyway, after a minute with Doris and her mother, I jumped over to the
hotel, and from the side of a most billowy waltz partner I detached
Shorty Erroll to get the ring and the smaller stores for a proper
wedding, and then I went out to bespeak my own ship's chaplain. I found
him lying in his bunk in his pajamas with a History of the Tunisian Wars
balanced on his chest and a wall-light just back of his head, and he
says: 'Why surely, Dick,' when I told him, but added: 'Though that old
sieve of a _Bayport_, I doubt will you ever get her as far as Manila,'
after which, carefully inserting a book-mark into the Tunisians, he
glides into his uniform and comes ashore with me.

"And without Doris even changing her dress we were married--in the
colonel's quarters, with every officer and every member of every
officer's family on the reservation--even the children--standing by. And
the women said, 'How distressing, Mr. Wickett, to have to leave in the
morning!' and the men said, 'Tough luck, Dick'--and be sure I thought it
was tough luck, and it would have been tough luck only by this time the
entire post had got busy and got word to Washington, and at eleven
o'clock, while we were still at the wedding-supper, word came to delay
the sailing of the gunboat for twenty-four hours. And that was followed
by a telegraphic order next morning to haul the _Bayport_ into dry dock
and overhaul her."

Wickett, who had been talking rapidly, came to a full stop, while three
bells were striking throughout the fleet.

"Nine-thirty," said Wickett. "I thought I saw a steamer's light beyond
the breakwater."

Carlin looked where he pointed. "I don't, but I haven't your eyes. How
long was the respite?"

"In ten days they had her afloat again. I thanked my God-given luck for
every flying minute of those ten days."

"And did she stay afloat long enough to get to Manila?"

"Oh, yes. She wasn't half bad. Needed a little nursing in heavy weather,
but outside of that she wasn't hopeless at all."

"And what of Mrs. Wickett?"

"She was to come to me just as soon as I cabled where in the East the
gunboat would fetch up for any sort of a stay. But I was