Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/318

290 share last voyage Five thousand dollars, all in the Lucy B All I've got and" Brainard was moved to pity, then amazement, that in this fashion he should be brought face to face with a tragedy so very like his own. But he glimpsed the fact, and was ashamed of it, that he would be stirred to deeper sympathy for the young skipper if there were no womanish wailing over his loss. And then, guilty and remorseful, Brainard realized that his own heart was full of sullen repining, bitter discontent with the fate that had robbed him of his treasure and his hopes, futile outcry against his forced return to the life of the station. He, then, was wholly lacking in that very fortitude which he wished to see displayed by this broken, fevered sailor in the cot, whose misfortune was, by far, the more crushing.

Brainard crawled stiffly outside to be alone. For some time he painfully overhauled his surging thoughts, and slowly there faded from his tired young face the clouding trouble that he had seen