Bunsby, still looking, and always looking with an immovable countenance, at the opposite side of the world, made no reply.
"Why not sheer off?" said the Captain.
"Eh?" whispered Bunsby, with a momentary gleam of hope.
"Sheer off," said the Captain.
"Where’s the good?" retorted the forlorn sage. "She’d capter me agen."
"Try!" replied the Captain. "Cheer up! Come! Now’s your time. Sheer off, Jack Bunsby!"
Jack Bunsby, however, instead of profiting by the advice, said in a doleful whisper:
"It all began in that there chest o’ yourn. Why did I ever conwoy her into port that night?"
"My lad," faltered the Captain, "I thought as you had come over her; not as she had come over you. A man as has got such opinions as you have!"
Mr. Bunsby merely uttered a suppressed groan.
"Come!" said the Captain, nudging him with his elbow, "now’s your time! Sheer off! I ’ll cover your retreat. The time’s a flying. Bunsby! It’s for liberty. Will you once?"
Bunsby was immovable.
"Bunsby!" whispered the Captain, "will you twice?"
Bunsby wouldn’t twice.
"Bunsby!" urged the Captain, "it’s for liberty; will you three times? Now or never!"
Bunsby didn’t then, and didn’t ever; for Mrs. Mac Stinger immediately afterwards married him.
One of the most frightful circumstances of the ceremony to the Captain, was the deadly interest exhibited therein by Juliana Mac Stinger; and the fatal concentration of her faculties, with which that promising child, already the image of her parent, observed the whole proceedings. The Captain saw in this a succession of man-traps stretching out infinitely; a series of ages of oppression and coercion, through which the seafaring line was doomed. It was a more memorable sight than the unflinching steadiness of Mrs. Bokum and the other lady, the exultation of the short gentleman in the tall hat, or even the fell inflexibility of Mrs. Mac Stinger. The Master Mac Stingers understood little of what was going on, and cared less; being chiefly engaged, during the ceremony, in treading on one another’s half-boots; but the contrast afforded by those wretched infants only set off and adorned the precocious woman in Juliana. Another year or two, the Captain thought, and to lodge where that child was, would be destruction.
The ceremony was concluded by a general spring of the young family on Mr. Bunsby, whom they hailed by the endearing name of father, and from whom they solicited halfpence. These gushes of affection over, the procession was about to issue forth again, when it was delayed for some little time by an unexpected transport on the part of Alexander Mac Stinger. That dear child, it seemed, connecting a chapel with tombstones, when it was entered for any purpose apart from the ordinary religious exercises, could not be persuaded but that his mother was now to be decently
