Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/55

Rh the dragging hours, as the ship cried aloud in every racking beam and rivet, or quaked as if her rearing bows had rammed a rock, Valentine convinced himself that the captain would not have dared refuse him if he had faced it out and insisted that the first officer take command.

"Don't I own the steamer?" he groaned. "Can't a man do what he pleases with his own property? And I let myself be bluffed out like a whipped pup. Only a lunatic would have defied me. Of course he's tucked away in a corner trying to pray down a storm like this. What did Carr tell me? What did Parlin say?"

On the heels of these emotions came the dreadful instant when the Suwannee took aboard the sea that swept her bridge. Valentine was flung out of his berth to the floor in a bruised heap, and heard the crash of glass and the riot of water which tumbled solid into the saloon outside his room. Before he could get footing his room was awash, and floating luggage knocked him this way and that. He crawled outside and collided with a