Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/273

Rh the pocket-book in the top— No, stay here mit me. Yump into Number T'ree boat this minute, you liddle nuisance."

"I cannot let him go," groaned the captain, "and risk the child be drownded. Vat his sick mudder say to me if he don't come back?"

Surely there was time for the captain to rush up to his room, only half the length of the deck, and rescue the savings of his long life at sea. The wistful, troubled face of the wife as he had last seen her, the hope of home and health, fairly drove him to run forward with head down. He looked overside as he ran, and the gray sea was lipping so close that he could have touched it from the deck below. The planks under his feet rolled once with a weary, sluggish heave. He had once been in a sailing vessel which foundered in such a smooth sea as this, and he recalled that just before she plunged under there had been a series of these long labored rolls as if the ship were gasping for breath before the sea should wholly smother her.

He had almost gained the ladder to the