Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/256

230 him, it was an odd and ungainly figure of a man that gained the deck and lumbered forward. A quartermaster near the gangway grinned when the pot-hat bounced from the bristling red head and carromed merrily off the deck-house, but a glance from the tail of Captain Arendt's eye froze the mahogany countenance of the offender into instant solemnity. It was a hint that the master of the ship was coming into his own. A few moments later he emerged from his quarters transformed. The smartly setting uniform of blue and the flat cap jammed down hard were so evidently what he belonged in, that the shore-going clothes had been like a clumsy disguise. A small boy flattened himself against the rail and saluted with immense dignity. The captain pinched him with a hairy paw and chuckled:

"Hello, Moses, or vas it Josephs I calls you last woyage? Holy Schmokes! If you keep my room no better dis woyage, I bites your head off close to your neck. You hear? Scoo-o-t."

"Moses-Josephs" fled, and Captain Arendt turned on his heel to go back to