RECITATIVE: All is prepared
MABEL: All is prepared, your gallant crew await you.
My Frederic in tears? It cannot be
That lion-heart quails at the coming conflict?
FREDERIC: No, Mabel, no.
A terrible disclosure
Has just been made.
Mabel, my dearly-loved one,
I bound myself to serve the pirate captain
Until I reached my one-and-twentieth birthday--
MABEL: But you are twenty-one?
FREDERIC: I've just discovered
That I was born in leap-year, and that birthday
Will not be reached by me till nineteen forty!
MABEL: Oh, horrible! catastrophe appalling!
FREDERIC: And so, farewell!
MABEL: No, no!
Ah, Frederic, hear me.