I did not wait to dress.
Merely in pyjamas I headed for the poop, Possum wailing dismally at
my desertion.
It was a feat to travel the narrow halls. Time and again I paused
and held on until my finger-tips hurt. In the moments of easement I
made progress. Yet I miscalculated. The foot of the broad stairway
to the chart-house rested on a cross-hall a dozen feet in length.
Over-confidence and an unusually violent antic of the Elsinore caused
the disaster. She flung down to starboard with such suddenness and
at such a pitch that the flooring seemed to go out from under me and
I hustled helplessly down the incline. I missed a frantic clutch at
the newel-post, flung up my arm in time to save my face, and, most
fortunately, whirled half about, and, still falling, impacted with my
shoulder muscle-pad on Captain West's door.
Youth will have its way. So will a ship in a sea. And so will a
hundred and seventy pounds of a man. The beautiful hardwood door-
panel splintered, the latch fetched away, and I broke the nails of
the four fingers of my right hand in a futile grab at the flying
door, marring the polished surface with four parallel scratches.
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