It didn’t matter to you what risks other men’s wives ran when you were snug in your office, did it?  You never thought of the passengers I had aboard, or the lives of my crew or me, did you?  You wanted me to cut corners and risk human lives for the sake of your reputation as an efficient manager, you—­” And he shook Mr. Skinner until the manager’s teeth rattled.  “Now you’re aboard yourself with your blushing bride, and how do you like it, eh?  How do you like it?  You know all about navigation, don’t you?  Well, you and your wife are the only passengers this trip, and I’m going to give you a taste of salt water you’ll remember till your dying day,” and with a shove he sent Mr. Skinner flying aft until he collided with the funnel.

“You’re fired!” Skinner screamed, beside himself with fear and rage.  But Matt Peasley was devoting all of his attention to the Quickstep now; and it was well that he did.  The vessel rose on the crest of a green comber thirty feet high, and plunged with the speed of an express elevator into the valley between that wave and the next.

A tremendous sea boiled in over the knight heads and swept aft, burying the Quickstep until nothing showed but her upper works.  But she was a sturdy craft and came up from under it, rode the succeeding three seas and was comparatively free of water when she shipped the next one.  The crest of it came in along the little promenade deck, carrying away the companion that led to the bridge, staving in the doors and windows of all the staterooms on the port side and carrying away the rails and stanchions.  There was two feet of water in Stateroom 7, where Mrs. Skinner clung to her husband, screaming hysterically.

But despite the awful buffeting she was receiving the Quickstep never faltered.  On she plowed, riding the green billows like a gull, and shipping a sea only occasionally.  The deckload, double-lashed, held, although the deckhouse groaned and twisted until Matt Peasley regretted the impulse that had impelled him to do this foolish thing for the sake of satisfying a grudge.

“She’ll make it, sir,” the man at the wheel called up; but Matt’s face was a little white and serious as he tried to smile back.

Another sea came ramping aboard and snatched the port lifeboat out of the davits, smashed in the door of the dining saloon and flooded it, gutted the galley, and drove the cook and the steward to the protection of the engine room.  The chief called up through the speaking tube: 

“How’s the boss making it, captain?”

“It’s a wet passage for him, chief.  I can hear his wife scream every time we ship one.”

“Serves her right for marrying the pest,” the chief growled, and turned away.

They crossed out, but at a cost that made Matt Peasley shudder, when he left the bridge in charge of the mate and went below to take stock of the damage.  A new boat and four days’ work for a carpenter gang—­perhaps eighteen hundred dollars’ worth of damage, not counting the demurrage!  It was a big price to pay for one brief moment of triumph, but Matt Peasley felt that it would have been cheap at twice the money.  He passed round on the starboard side of the vessel and found Mr. Skinner wet to the skin and shivering.