Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/269

Rh escape. The captain tore their leader from the boat, and, like a red bear, seized him around the waist and tossed him overboard like a bundle of rags. Those near heard the choking yell of a drowning man.

The captain turned, and for the only time shouted at the top of his great voice:

"Men, the ship is in a sinking condition. The only coward on board vas gone. To your stations. We must all safe life."

A group of stokers huddled near the rail dropped the bundles of clothing they had brought on deck, and one of them, whose head was bound in rags, cried back:

"We're wid ye. You near kilt me to-day, you big Dutch, but by  , you're a man. All right, sorr; we'll go after thim dummies in th' steerage."

It is consistent with few narratives of disaster at sea, but there was no more shouting among the crew of the Wasdale. They bent fiercely to their business, with whispers and muttered directions. It was not the nearness of death that stifled their outcries so much as the imminent neighborhood of a man with a stout heart and a cool head, who had hammered iron-fisted