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CHAPTER
A MARRIAGE AT SEA
THE RUE DE MAQUETRA
The stillness was impressive; from the sands came a dull and distant moan of surf; the dim strains of a concertina threaded the hush which seemed to dwell like something material upon the black, vague shape of a large brig almost directly abreast of us. We were waiting for the hour of midnight to strike and our ears were strained.
"What noise is that?" I exclaimed.
"The dip of sweeps, sir," answered my captain, Aaron Caudel; "some smack a-coming along--ay, there she is," and he shadowily pointed to a dark, square heap betwixt the piers, softly approaching to the impulse of her long oars, the rhythmic grind of which in the thole-pins made a strange, wild ocean music of the far-off roar of the surf, and the sob of water alongside, and the delicate wash of the tide in the green piles and timbers of the two long, narrow, quaint old piers.
"Right for the job, sir--right as your honour could desire it. There's but one consideration which ain't like a feeling of sartinty--and that I must say consarns the dawg."
"Smother the dog! But you are right, Caudel. We must leave our boots in the ditch."
"Ain't there plenty of grass, sir?" said he.
"I hope so; but a fathom of gravel will so crunch under those hoofs of yours that the very dead buried beneath might turn in their coffins--let alone a live dog wide awake from the end of his beastly cold snout to the tip of his tail. Does the ladder chafe you?"
"No, sir. Makes me feel a bit asthmatic-like, and if them duniers get a sight of me they'll reckon I've visited the Continent to make a show of myself," he exclaimed, with a low, deep-sea laugh, whilst he spread his hands upon his breast, around which, under cover of a large, loose, long pea-coat, he had coiled a length of rope-ladder with two iron hooks at one end of it, which made a hump under either shoulder-blade. There was no other way, however, of conveying the ladder ashore. In the hand it would instantly have challenged attention, and a bag would have been equally an object of curiosity to the two or three Custom-House phantoms flitting about in triangular-shaped trousers and shako-like headgear.
"There goes midnight, sir!" cried Caudel.
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