Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/279

Rh. Her commander cast one hungry glance toward the bridge, and saw her bows vanish in a smother of foam. As he jumped, he felt a shudder, as if every plate was drawing from its rivets. When his head rose on the crest of a roller, a boat-hook was twisted into his shirt, and he was yanked inboard by half a dozen hands, while the seamen bent to the sweeps for life or death as they strove to pull beyond reach of the coming suction.

The boat was not more than a hundred yards astern when the Wasdale pitched again, rolled once, and vanished with a thunderous farewell as her decks blew up in clouds of hissing steam.

As if the killing fog had waited for this sacrifice, it began to lift until the scattered lights in the eight boats began to flock together and the flotilla lay waiting for daybreak. The captain knew not whether any souls had been left on board, and miserably impatient he longed for light to count them.

"It is a bad night's vork," he said to the bos'n at the tiller. "I haf lost my ship, and I may never get anudder. I haf lost