Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/274

248 bridge when he saw a moving blotch of white almost hidden behind the bow of a disabled boat. Swerving, he found a woman, a little girl, and a man, plainly their husband and father. The man was leaning over the rail, trying to call to the nearest boat, which was warily pushing away from the sinking ship. Spasms of fear so clutched his throat that his cries were only whispers, as one shrieks without voice amid nightmare perils. The woman clung to his coat, the little girl to her mother's garment. Evidently they had been overlooked because of the hiding place to which the man had blindly led them. As the captain reached the rail, the man tore himself loose from his wife and child with a great cry, and plunged headlong overside, not into the sea, but into the boat, which, at great risk, had been pulled close to save the group. With a crash, he smote the metal gunwale and fell inboard.

"Did you caught that dirty loafer?" shouted the captain.

The voice of the fourth officer in charge of the boat bellowed: