He held out his left hand, palm uppermost, and started and blinked when there came no smack of the right fist descending into it.

“There’s me talking again,” he said.  “Never mind, Minnie dear, it’s only your old uncle.  Let’s be back up town.”

The wedding day was a Thursday.  The ceremony was to take place in the chapel of which David Davis was a member; the subsequent festivities were arranged for at an hotel.  It wag to be a notable affair, an epochmaker in the local shipping world, and when all was over there would be time for the newly-wedded to go aboard the Burdock and take her out on the tide.  Old Captain Price, decorous in stiff black, drove to the church with his son in a two-horse brougham.  Neither spoke a word till they were close to the chapel door.  Then the old man burst out suddenly.

“For God’s sake, Arthur boy, do the right thing by your ship.”

Arthur Price was a little moved.  “I will, father,” he said.  “Here’s my hand on it.”  There was a pause.  “Why don’t you take my hand, father?” he asked.

“Eh?” The old man started.  “I thought I’d took it, Arthur.  I’ll be going soft next.  Here’s the other hand for you.”

The reception at the hotel and the breakfast there were notable affairs.  Everybody who counted for anything with the hosts were there, and after a little preliminary formality and awkwardness the function grew to animation.  The shipping folk of Cardiff know champagne less as a beverage than as a symbol, and there was plenty of it.  Serious men became frivolous; David Davis made a speech in Welsh; Minnie glowed and blossomed; Arthur was everybody’s friend.  The old Captain, seated at the bottom of the table with an iron-clad matron on one side and a bored reporter on the other, watched him with a groan.  The man who was to take the Burdock out of dock was drinking.  Even one glass at such a time would have breached the old man’s code; it was a crime against shipmastership.  But Arthur, with his bride beside him, her brown eyes alight, her shoulder against his shoulder, had gone much further than the one glass.  The exhilaration of the day dazzled him; a waiter with a bottle to refill his glass was ever at his shoulder.  His voice rattled on untiringly; already the old man saw how the muscles or the jaw were slack and the eyes moved loosely.  The young Captain hid a toast to respond to; he swayed as he stood up to speak, and his tongue stumbled on his consonants.  The reporter on Captain Price’s left offered him champagne at the moment.

“Take it away,” rumbled the old man.  “Swill it yourself.”

The pressman nodded.  “It is pretty shocking stuff,” he agreed.  “I’m going nap on the coffee myself.”

It came to a finish at last.  The bride went up to change, and old Captain Price took a cab to the docks.  The Burdock was smart in new paint, and even the deck hands had been washed for the occasion.

“I’ll go down with you a bit,” he explained to Sewell, the chief mate.  “The pilot’ll bring me back.  I suppose I can go up to the chart-house?”