Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/64

52 before he sailed. In the midst of the storm the girlish face was strangely calm.

Draining the mug, he clambered on deck again, taking the lee-side, the captain still sticking to the weather. To the boy he seemed suddenly old and weak. And in the light from the binnacle the muscles of his face were caught up on one side as if in pain. His lurching, too, was more than the ship's roll warranted a veteran rider of the seas.

Stroke coming? Ben asked himself, then shouted in the other's ear,—

"You'd ought to go below, sir."

"What'd ye take me for?" the granite soul roared back above the storm, "a lily-livered landlubber afeared of a capful o' wind?"

"It'll be a regular jugful before we're through, sir, and you're not well."

"The more reason I shouldn't leave it to youngsters without hair on 'er—chests but sure as there's a God above those masts, the old girl'll ride 'er out. She's His fav'rite daughter, boy."

At this premature boast the shrouds whistled eerily, every plank groaned as if torn asunder, and above the pandemoniac symphony blared the voice of some galloping storm king. Even as he spoke the captain staggered, but dauntlessly gazed aloft to where noble spars should have ranged, tier on tier, with three little pieces of canvas holding on stoutly against the wind, but all they could see through the gloom was the ghostly jib and the innumerable driving lances of the rain. Even the sailing lights gleamed dimly, rather like glazing