Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/270

244 obedience into his crews through a stormy lifetime at sea.

The Wasdale had cleared with three hundred men, women, and children on board. There were boats to hold twice that number. It was only a question of time in which to stow these precious cargoes, a race with the sea which each moment sucked the Wasdale lower, as her decks sloped with a sickening list to starboard. A minute bungled meant many lives lost.

The captain seemed rather to drift than rush from one part of the decks to another. Going down the saloon stairway, he found a line of stewards passing passengers up as if they were so much baggage. The water was in the staterooms and washing along the alleys. Weeping women, clad only in their night-clothes, were shoved into cork jackets, bundled above, handed to the waiting seamen, and laid shivering in the boats without touching foot to deck. After ransacking the rooms to search out all the cabin people, the captain returned on deck to find confusion and some outcry where he had left