ss Moggadore has
two curls, and let me tell you that her nose heads the right way. Miss
Moggadore wasn't behind the door when brains were served out. Well,
she and Mrs. Barstow, and your humble servant," he convulsed his short
square figure into a sea-bow, "are for having you and Miss Bellassys
married straight away off."

"So there is a clergyman on board?" I cried, feeling the blood in my
face, and staring eagerly at him.

"No, sir," said he, "there's no clergyman aboard my ship."

"Then," said I, almost sulkily, "what on earth, Captain Parsons, is the
good of you and Mrs. Barstow and Miss Moggadore advising Miss Bellassys
and me to get married straight away off, as you term it?"

"It ought to be done," said he, with an emphatic nod.

"What, without a parson?" I cried.

"_I_ am a parson," he exclaimed.

I imagined he intended a stupid pun upon his name.

"Parson enough," he continued, "to do your business. _I'll_ marry you!"

"You?" I shouted.

"Yes, me," he returned, striking his breast with his fist.

"Pray, where were you ordained?" said I, disgusted with the bad taste
of what I regarded as a joke.

"Ordained!" he echoed, "I don't understand you. I'm the master of a
British merchantman, and, as such, can and do desire, for Miss
Bellassys's sake, to marry ye."

Now, I do not know how, when or where I had stumbled upon the fact, but
all on a sudden it came into my head that it was as Captain Parsons
said: namely, that the master of a British merchantman was empowered,
whether by statute, by precedent, or by recognition of the laws of
necessity, to celebrate the marriage service on board his own ship at
sea. I may have read it in the corner of a newspaper--in some column
of answers to correspondents--as likely as not in a work of fiction;
but the mere fact of having heard of it, persuaded me that Captain
Parsons was in earnest; and very much indeed did he look in earnest as
he surveyed me with an expression of triumph in his little eyes, whilst
I hung in the wind, swiftly thinking.

"But am I to understand," said I, fetching a breath, "that a marriage
at sea, with nobody but the captain of the ship to officiate, is legal?"

"Certainly," he cried, "let me splice you to Miss Bellassys, and
there's nothing mortal outside the Divorce Court that can sunder you.
How many couples do you think I've married in my time?"

"I cannot imagine."

"Six," he cried, "and they're all doing well, too."

"But