Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/258

232 and snapping blue eye, who ducked under the weapon, smashed him in the face with one hand, squeezed his neck in the other, and flung him against a bunker door with such force that he lay as he fell, a dirty, huddled heap.

"Vash him off on deck, and put him in the hospital," said the captain. "He's a goot man ven sober. He vas vit me in anudder ship once. I knows him. Only his ribs is cracked, I t'ink."

When the five thousand ton Wasdale began to crawl down the Mersey, a hundred emigrants clustered along the after-rail, and shivered as they chattered. Two score cabin passengers walked the saloon deck amidships, and watched the great gray docks slip past. Twilight brooded over the Irish Sea and the filmy Welsh coast when dinner called them to make swift acquaintance, from which the ponderous good humor of the captain was missing. He dined alone in his room, and hastily, because he preferred to keep close to the bridge in these jostling waters. Yet the night had become almost windless, and so clear that the twin lanterns of the