Moddridge was a pale, thin, hollow-cheeked, nervous looking man of forty, and of a height of five feet four. Not much to look at was Mr. Moddridge, yet, in his own way, he was a good deal of a power in Wall Street.
“Moddridge,” retorted the owner, firmly, “this is a time when you can do only one useful thing. Go below and turn in. I’ll wake you when the fog has lifted.”
“What? I lie down?” demanded Eben Moddridge, in a startled voice. “And then very likely go down to the fishes without ever waking up?”
“We haven’t that kind of a captain, now,” replied Mr. Delavan, easily. “You just saw how easily he pulled the ‘Rocket’ out of a dangerous trap. If Captain Bill Hartley had stood in Halstead’s place we’d have been smashed fore and aft.”
“Hartley was an excellent skipper,” retorted Moddridge, peevishly. “He was a most careful man. He never would have gone into a fog. He wouldn’t take a chance of being wrecked.”
“That was why I had to get rid of him, Eben,” retorted Mr. Delavan. “Hartley was an old maid, who never ought to have tried to follow the sea. If it looked like rain he’d run for harbor and drop anchor.”
“A very wise and careful sailing master,” insisted Mr. Moddridge.
“Yes; Hartley had nerves to pretty near match your own,” mocked Mr. Delavan. “But he wasn’t the kind of man for the kind of work we have in hand nowadays. And now, Moddridge, I know that your talk, and mine, is bothering Captain Halstead. Go down aft again, and don’t bother the lookout by talking to him. Be a good fellow.”
Muttering, and with many shakings of the head, the smaller man obeyed. He would try to be brave, but nothing could conceal from Eben Moddridge the certainty that they were shortly to be sunk.