JOE: Thanks my good woman. We grant you a pension for your love.

(_She quests back to her pool of grog. She finds a spoon. She sits to
the delicious salvage, with back against the chimney and woolen legs
out-stretched. Speeches to her are nothing now. We cannot expect her
help in winding up our play. The burden falls on Joe. We must be
patient through a sentimental page or two._)

JOE: Ha! My velvet cloak, which I left at Castle Crag when I laid
aside the Prince and took disguise. These unintentioned ruffians by
their dirty jest have clothed me to my office.

SAILOR CAPTAIN: I swear my allegiance, your Majesty.

JOE: I rely on my sailors to clear the coast and seas. But first I
want your allegiance in another high concern. Some fourteen years ago,
when I was a lad of ten, I journeyed with my royal father to the
castle of the Duke of Cornwall, which stands high on the wind-swept
coast. Its giddy towers rise sheer above the ocean until the very
rooks nesting in the battlements grow dizzy at the height. It is the
outer bastion of the world, laughing to scorn the ocean's siege.

In that castle, Captain, there lived a little girl; and she and I
romped the sounding corridors together. And once I led her to an open
'brasure in the steep-pitched wall, and held her so that she might see
the waves curling on the rocks below. And tales of mermaids I
invented, and shipwreck and treasure buried in the noisy caverns of
the rock, where twice a day the greedy tide goes in and out to seek
its fortune. And far afield we wandered and stood waist-deep in the
golden meadows, until the weary twilight called us home.

And I remember, when tired with play, that her mother sang to us an
old song, a lullaby. Her voice was soft, with a gentleness that only a
mother knows who sits with drowsy children.

And to that little girl I was betrothed. It was sworn with oath and
signature that some day I would marry her and that, when I became king
of England in the revolving years, she would be its queen.

BETSY: By what miracle did you know me, Hal?

JOE: It was the song you sang. Your voice was the miracle that told
the secret. With unvarnished speech I woo you. I love you, Margaret,
and I ask you to be my wife.

MEG: (_faintly--floating in a golden sea of grog_) Hooray!

(_Joe takes Betsy in his arms and kisses her._)

JOE: The magic of your lips, my dear, is the miracle that answers me.
My loyal sailors, I present you. Margaret, Duchess