days, so that Old John
might be ashore to give his daughter away. The most I mind of the
wedding was the wonder of beholding the old chap there in a
long-tailed coat, having never seen him for years but in his
oilskins.

Well, the rest of that year seemed pretty much like all the others,
except that coming home was better than ever. But when Christmas
went by, and February came and our turn to be out again on the
Gunnel, I went with a dismal feeling I hadn't known before.
For Bathsheba was drawing near her time, and the sorrow was that she
must go through it without me. She had walked down to the quay with
us, to see us off; and all the way she chatted and laughed with my
father as cheerful as cheerful--but never letting her eyes rest on
me, I noticed, and I saw what that meant; and when it came to
goodbye, there was more in the tightening of her arms about me than
I'd ever read in it before.

The old man, I reckon, had a wisht time with me, the next two or
three weeks; but, by the mercy of God, the weather behaved furious
all the while, leaving a man no time to mope. 'Twas busy all, and
busy enough, to keep a clear light inside the lantern, and warm souls
inside our bodies. All through February it blew hard and cold from
the north and north-west, and though we lay in the very mouth of the
Gulf Stream, for ten days together there wasn't a halliard we could
touch with the naked hand, nor a cloth nor handful of cotton-waste
but had to be thawed at the stove before using. Then, with the
beginning of March, the wind tacked round to south-west, and stuck
there, blowing big guns, and raising a swell that was something
cruel. It was one of these gales that tore away the bell from the
lighthouse, though hung just over a hundred feet above water-level.
As for us, I wonder now how the little boat held by its two-ton
anchors, even with three hundred fathom of chain cable to bear the
strain and jerk of it; but with the spindrift whipping our faces, and
the hail cutting them, we didn't seem to have time to think of
_that_. Bathsheba thought of it, though, in her bed at home--as I've
heard since--and lay awake more than one night thinking of it.

But the third week in March the weather moderated; and soon the sun
came out and I began to think. On the second afternoon of the fair
weather I climbed up under the cage and saw the Islands for the first
time; and coming down, I said to my father:

"Suppose that Bathsheba is