Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/257

Rh his room, remembering with a start that he had not placed the precious wallet in his safe, but had transferred it to his blouse. He clapped his hand to the breast pocket, hove an explosive sigh of relief when he found it there, and was instantly bent on banishing all chance of loss, when the chief engineer popped up from below and sought him out in breathless haste with these tidings:

"Sorry to trouble you, sir, but a drunken dock-rat of a Liverpool fireman refuses to go on watch, and he's reinforced the argument with a slice-bar, and laid out two of my oilers and a stoker, and I need more help to get him in irons. He's raising hell, and no mistake, sir."

The captain was halfway down the ladder before the chief had done speaking, and despite the bigness of him, made his way to the fire-room like a squirrel. The pallid, sodden mutineer, backed into a corner, was swinging the iron bar in empty circles, fighting the dancing shadows from an open furnace door, cursing and muttering. His bleary vision had no time to focus on the big man with the red face