Page:Morley roberts--Blue Peter--sea yarns.djvu/189

Rh "Man, she's your wife," said Smith; and once more Susan Ruddle said—

"Oh, Tom, how could you do it and me here?"

Then Chadwick spoke and rebuked Ruddle very strongly for having done it, and Ruddle shook his head and scratched it and shook it again, and then burst out with dreadful language against Chadwick for interfering with a stranger.

"He don't know any of you," said Smith, as Chadwick fell into a cold perspiration to hear his chief use such awful language. "He don't know any of you. And he lets on that he is the mate of this ship, and that we are off the Old Head of Kinsale."

And Susan Ruddle fainted dead away.

"Take the poor silly woman down below," said Ruddle. "She must be mad. I don't know where I am, or how I got here, but I do know jolly well that I ain't married, and that a girl in London that I ain't by no means stuck on thinks I'm going to marry her this very year. But I ain't goin' to, by a dern sight. Not me."

They carried her down below just as the 'old man' came on deck after setting the mate's arm. Smith told him what had happened.