"See how gray the sky is now," he went on. "It's going to blow even harder, and they're shortening sail."
They looked aft to where the crew, whose imprecations were only visible, so loud was the drumming of the wind, were getting down the mainsail; and presently they were running east southeast under a small jib, with the wind roaring upon the port quarter and the waves champing at the taffrail. It did not strike either of them that there was any reason to be anxious until Yanni came forward with a frightened yellow face and said that the captain was praying to St. Nicholas in the cabin below.
"Samothraki bad place to go," Yanni told them, dismally. "Many fish-mens drowned there."
A particularly violent squall shrieked assent to his forebodings, and the helmsman, looking over his shoulder, crossed himself as the squall left them and tore ahead, decapitating the waves in its course so that the surface of the water, blown into an appearance of smoothness, resembled the powdery damascene of ice in a skater's track.
"It's terrible, ain't it?" Yanni moaned.
"Cheer up," Michael said. "I'm looking forward to your shaving me before lunch in your native island."
"We sha'n't never come Samothraki," Yanni said. "And I can't pray no more somehows since I went away to America. Else I'd go and pray along with the captain. Supposing I was to give a silver ship to the παναγἱἱα in Teno, would you lend me the money for the workmens to do it?"
"I'll pay half," Michael volunteered. "A silver ship to Our Lady of Tenos," he explained to Sylvia.
"Gee!" Yanni shouted, more cheerfully. "I'm going to pray some right now. I guess when I get kneeling the trick'll come back to me. I did so much kneeling in New York to shine boots that I used to lie in bed on a Sunday. But this goddam storm's regular making my knees itch."
He hurried aft in a panic of religious devotion, whither Michael and Sylvia presently followed him in the hope of coffee. Every one on board except the helmsman was praying, and there was no signs of fire; even the sacred flame before St. Nicholas had gone out. The cabin was in a confusion of supplicating mariners prostrate amid onions, oranges, and cheese; the very cockroaches seemed to listen anxiously in the wild motion. The helmsman was not steering too well, or else the sea was growing wilder, for once or twice a stream of water poured down the companion and drenched the occupants, until at last the captain rushed on deck to curse the offender, calling down upon his head the pains of hell should they sink and he be drowned.