Page:Cruise of the Dry Dock.djvu/230

 Caradoc nodded, “I'll go down and send them forward,” he asserted with conviction, and started to climb out of the barrel.

Madden looked at the Englishman with a certain apprehension, “Caradoc, if you go down there where they are drinking, won't you——”

“No, I'm not going to drink.”

“It will be a temptation.”

“I have myself in hand now. This talk has done me good. No, I'm all right.” He swung out of the barrel and started down the ratlines.

Leonard watched him anxiously, not at all sure of the outcome of his mission, not at all sure that the hot smell of rum in the galley would not again overcome his resistance.

The sun was just dipping into the sea and its last light spread out of the west to the zenith like a huge red-gold fan. Purplish shadows had already begun to dim the tug and dock and ocean.

Fifteen or twenty degrees above the sunset shone a pale crescent moon in the burnished sky. The sight of the moon somehow cheered Madden. He recalled a childish superstition