rty
lives in one man's hands. It's splendid, uncle. And Arthur," her
voice softened pleasantly, "is the man."

The old Captain wheeled on her sharply. "Tons and lives!" he cried.
"Tons and lives be damned! It's not for them she's been run to a
thumb-span and tended like a sick baby. It's for the clean honesty of
it, to do a captain's work like a wise captain and not soil a record.
D'ye think I stump my bridge for forty-eight hours on end because of
the underwriters and the deck hands? Not me, my girl, not me! It's my
trade to lay her sweetly in Barcelona bay, and it's my honor to know
my work and do it."

He seemed to shrug his shoulder. The girl could not know it was his
right hand he flung up to the scarred steel plates above him.

"There's your Burdock," he said. "She's your dividend-grinder; she's
my ship. And if I'd thought of no more than your five thousand tons
and your forty lives, she'd not be where she is."

He held out his left hand, palm uppermost, and started and blinked
when there came no smack of the right fist descending into it.

"There's me talking again," he said. "Never mind, Minnie dear, it's
only your old uncle. Let's be back up town."

The wedding day was a Thursday. The ceremony was to take place in the
chapel of which David Davis was a member; the subsequent festivities
were arranged for at an hotel. It wag to be a notable affair, an
epochmaker in the local shipping world, and when all was over there
would be time for the newly-wedded to go aboard the Burdock and take
her out on the tide. Old Captain Price, decorous in stiff black,
drove to the church with his son in a two-horse brougham. Neither
spoke a word till they were close to the chapel door. Then the old
man burst out suddenly.

"For God's sake, Arthur boy, do the right thing by your ship."

Arthur Price was a little moved. "I will, father," he said. "Here's
my hand on it." There was a pause. "Why don't you take my hand,
father?" he asked.

"Eh?" The old man started. "I thought I'd took it, Arthur. I'll be
going soft next. Here's the other hand for you."

The reception at the hotel and the breakfast there were notable
affairs. Everybody who counted for anything with the hosts were
there, and after a little preliminary formality and awkwardness the
function grew to animation. The shipping folk of Cardiff know
champagne less as a beverage than as a symbol, and there was plenty
of it. Serious men became frivolous; David Davis m