clerk in a mercantile house, who
had a fresh complexion and a clean shirt to boast of (qualifications
unknown to the Portuguese), won the heart of the eldest daughter; and the
old lady, who was not a very strict Catholic, gave her consent to this
heretical union. The Catholic priests, who had long been trying to persuade
the old lady to shut up her daughters in a convent, and endow the church
with her property, expressed a holy indignation at the intended marriage.
The Portuguese gentlemen, who could not brook the idea of so many fair
hills of vines going away to a stranger, were equally indignant: in short,
the whole Portuguese population of the island were in arms; but the old
lady, who had always contrived to have her way before her husband's death,
was not inclined to be thwarted now that she was her own mistress; and,
notwithstanding threats and expostulations from all quarters, she awaited
but the arrival of an English man-of-war that the ceremony might be
performed, there being at that time no Protestant clergyman on the island;
for the reader must know that a marriage on board of a king's ship, by the
captain, duly entered in the log-book, is considered as valid as if the
ceremony were performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

I once married a couple on board of a little ten-gun brig of which I
condescended to take the command, to oblige the first lord of the
Admiralty; offered, I believe, to _provide_ for me, and rid the Board of
all future solicitations for employment or promotion.

It was one of my sailors, who had come to a determination to make an honest
woman of Poll and an ass of himself at one and the same time. The ceremony
took place on the quarter-deck. "Who gives this woman away?" said I, with
due emphasis, according to the ritual. "I do," cried the boatswain, in a
gruff voice, taking the said lady by the arm and shoving her towards me, as
if he thought her not worth keeping. Everything went on seriously,
nevertheless. The happy pair were kneeling down on the union-jack, which
had been folded on the deck in consideration of the lady's knees, and I was
in the middle of the blessing, when two pigs, which we had procured at St
Jago's, being then off that island (creatures more like English pigs on
stilts than anything else, unless you could imagine a cross between a pig
and a greyhound), in the lightness of their hearts and happy ignorance of
their doom, took a frisk, as you often see pigs do on shore,