“Faith and I will,” she acquiesced. “Maybe it’s all right it is--if you’re certain you don’t want to marry that young man of yours. The trouble is the plentiful lack of females we have here in the sea. You haven’t seen Prudence Gallegher yet. She’s the one other woman here. She drifted in alone and half crazy on the ship Swan two years ago. Her husband and everybody else had been drowned. In the two years she’s been here she’s been married four times.” “Four times! How horrible! How could she----” “It’s no choice she had. There were twenty odd men here and only two women besides her. It’s not much about men in the rough you’ll be knowing, I think. Prudence had to make her choice and make it quick. She _had_ to, or--well, she did the best she could, and she married two days after she got here. Six months later the poor creature was a widow--her husband killed by a block fallin’ from aloft and knocking his brains out. The morning after she married again. She had to, you’ll understand. Six or eight months afterward her second husband disappeared, and Cap’n Forbes declared it’s dead he must be, and that she must many once more. So marry she did. Three months ago Mr. Gallegher’s wife died--Mr. Gallegher is the mate--and within a week Prudence was a widow once more. It was a big snake that Captain Forbes keeps as a pet that did the worruk that time; it got loose and crushed poor Strother to death. The very next day Prudence was forced to marry Gallegher--and her with a two-months’-old baby. Captain Forbes, you’ll understand, had a wife of his own all this time, but she died a week ago, and it’s myself that’s looking for somethin’ to happen to Gallegher any day.” Dorothy gasped. “You mean----” she cried. “I mane that Cap’n Forbes wants a wife mighty bad, and that Gallegher wants even worse to find one for him. I mane that you’d better be considerin’ whether you’d rather marry your young man--or Cap’n Forbes.” Dorothy listened with strained attention. This thing was too horrible to be true. That she, Dorothy Fairfax, ran the slightest danger of being forced to marry anybody was simply unthinkable. Mother Joyce was exaggerating. This Prudence Gallegher must be a weak sort of a woman--not one by whom to measure herself. She turned to Mrs. Joyce. “Have--have _you_ been married more than once?” she asked. A grim look banished the kindly lines from Mother Joyce’s face. “Only once, mavourneen,” she answered. “I gave them all to understand long ago that if they did away with Tim, it’s follow him I would--after I had killed all of them I could. And they belaved me. Besides, it’s an old woman I am--not a pretty young colleen like you. You’d better be after takin’ my advice; marry your young man quick if you want him and stay on your own ship till he can get you away from here.” “But they all say we can’t get away.”