Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/251



IS wife half raised herself from the couch which had been her abiding place for more than twenty years. "My broken flower," the captain named her in his prayers at sea. The One to whom these petitions arose each night his liner throbbed along the Western Ocean track had granted that the heart and soul of the wife should wax in strength and sweetness while her body lay bound in chains of suffering. Because to-night there was worry in the tired, brave eyes which strove so well to mirror only gladness when the captain was at home, he was much disturbed, the more because he had made the cloud to come.

She looked, indeed, like a "broken flower" beside the towering strength of the captain, who growled through his flaming beard when he would speak most softly, who moved in a series of small 225