Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/262

236 ahead as if in nervous dread, like a blind horse in a crowded thoroughfare.

Before long she began to feel her way with frequent pauses, while those on watch, from bridge to crow's nest, listened, listened. Their eyes were useless; their ears dreaded lest they hear too loud reply to the siren that shouted over and over again to this world of gray nothingness that the Wasdale was abroad. The ship crept ahead, slowed to listen, crept ahead again, but the responses to her outcries so soon became softened or silent that they held no menace.

The hour was near midnight. In their staterooms, the cabin passengers awoke to cast sleepy abuse at the fog-horn, and turn over again to slumber, warm and dry, believing themselves as secure as in their own homes. On the bridge an uncouth, dripping specter in oil-skins suddenly threw back his head and spun round to face the starboard quarter as if he had felt the sting of a bullet.

A moment's waiting, the fog-horn of the Wasdale moaned again, and from out in the baffling pallor came the ghost of a