Here he was becoming unjust, irritable, womanish; everything he had always most despised in a man of action.
A shout came to him from seaward.
A shot followed.
The perspiration started to his forehead. He ran to the ladder-head.
In the dimness below he could see the old foretop-man sitting alert beside the black square of the open trap.
Piper was stooping forward, one great hand curved at his ear, listening intently.
"Piper!"
"Sir."
"All well below there?"
"Well, sir, I'm not justly sure. A minute back I seemed to feel like a gush o wind—"