Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/21

Rh the sooner the thing is sifted to the bottom the better."

Port Captain Graham flushed and twisted his white mustache with a fist like an oaken billet. He swallowed hard as if trying to keep his rising steam under control, and replied with a catch in his deep voice:

"Mr. Valentine, I've been with the Palmetto Line going on thirty years, from the time when your father bought the first old side-wheeler that flew the house flag. Jesse Kendrick was third under me in my first command and I know him inside out. A finer sailor and a better man never rounded Hatteras. Are you going to blackguard the ranking skipper afloat in your service because of a flimsy complaint like that, without calling the old man up to the office? Doesn't he get a hearing? Why, you've just now waltzed into this company like a boy with a lot of toy steamboats to play with, after loafing abroad in a muck of luxury ever since you left your college. You've never even clapped eyes on Captain Kendrick."

Mr. Holmes, the General Manager,