Chapter 2 - Page 2

Doctor ought to have expected. When Mark
joined his ship, of which he was now the first officer, he sought
Bridget and found her. The aunt, however, administered to him the second
potion of the same dose that her brother had originally dealt out, and
gave him to understand that his presence in Front street was not
desired. This irritated both the young people, Bridget being far less
disposed to submit to her aunt than to her father, and they met
clandestinely in the streets. A week or two of this intercourse brought
matters to a crisis, and Bridget consented to a private marriage. The
idea of again going to sea, leaving his betrothed entirely in the hands
of those who disliked him for his father's sake, was intolerable to
Mark, and it made him so miserable, that the tenderness of the deeply
enamoured girl could not withstand his appeals. They agreed to get
married, but to keep their union a secret until Mark should become of
age, when it was hoped he would be in a condition, in every point of
view, openly to claim his wife.

A thing of this sort, once decided on, is easily enough put in execution
in America. Among Mark's college friends was one who was a few years
older than himself, and who had entered the ministry. This young man was
then acting as a sort of missionary among the seamen of the port, and he
had fallen in the way of the young lover the very first day of his
return to his ship. It was an easy matter to work on the good nature of
this easy-minded man, who, on hearing of the ill treatment offered to
his friend, was willing enough to perform the ceremony. Everything being
previously arranged, Mark and Bridget were married, early one morning,
during the time the latter was out, in company with a female friend of
about her own age, to take what her aunt believed was her customary walk
before breakfast. Philadelphia, in 1796, was not the town it is to-day.
It then lay, almost entirely, on the shores of the Delaware, those of
the Schuylkill being completely in the country. What was more, the best
quarters were still near the river, and the distance between the
Rancocus--meaning Mark's ship, and not the creek of that name--and the
house of Bridget's aunt, was but trifling. The ceremony took place in
the cabin of the vessel just named, which, now that the captain was
ashore in his own house, Mark had all to himself, no second-mate having
been shipped, and which was by no means an inappropriate place for the
nuptials of a pair like that which our young people turned out to be, in
the end.

The Rancocus, though not a large, was a very fine, Philadelphia-built
ship, then the best vessels of the country. She was of a little less
than four hundred tons in measurement, but she had a very neat and