Читать книгу The Captain from Connecticut онлайн

22 страница из 86

"Steer small," he growled at the quartermasters.

It was unsafe to run before this wind and sea. A cautious captain would have kept the Delaware upon the wind for a while longer, or would even heave-to until the sea moderated--provided, that is to say, that a cautious captain would have left port at all on such a night, which was quite inconceivable. As first lieutenant of the ship, and responsible to his captain for her material welfare, Hubbard could never quite reconcile in his mind the jarring claims of military necessity and common sense. He looked with something like dismay about the ship in the growing daylight, at the snow which covered her deck, and the ice which glittered on her standing rigging. The quarterdeck carronades beside him were mere rounded heaps of snow on their forward sides. When the forenoon watch was called he would have to set the hands at work shovelling the stuff away--queer work for a sailorman. The tradition of centuries was that the first work in the morning was washing down decks, not shovelling snow off them.