Cappy Ricks Part 11

"Oh, n.o.body objects to the smell particularly, sir, though it's been my experience that anybody can cheapen a good thing by overuse--and we have three months of that smell ahead of us. It's the taste that busts my bobstay."

"Why, what do you mean?"

"Well, you see, sir, the odor of creosote is so heavy it won't float in the air, but just settles down over everything, like mildew on a pair of boots. So it gets in the stores and you taste it. You can store flour below deck aft and creosoted piling on deck for'd--and you won't be out two weeks before that flour is spoiled. Same way with the tea, coffee, sugar, mush, salt-horse--everything. It all tastes of creosote; and then the d.a.m.ned stuff rubs off on the ship and ruins the paintwork. And if the crew happen to have any cuts or abrasions on their hands they're almost certain to get infected with the awful stuff, and you'll be kept busy doctoring them. Then, the first thing, along comes a gale and you're shorthanded, and there's the devil to pay."

"Aye!" Mr. MacLean interrupted solemnly. "I dinna care for creosote mysel', sir; so, wi' your kind permission, I'll hae ma time--an' I'll hae it noo."

Matt Peasley bent upon the recalcitrant Scotchman a withering glare.

"Very well, Mr. MacLean," he said presently, "I never could sail in the same ship with a quitter; so you might as well go now, when we can part good friends." He turned to Mr. Murphy. "How about you, Mike? Are you going to run out on me, too?"

Now, as between the Irish and the Scotch, history records no preponderance of courage in either, for both are Gaels and a comparison is difficult.

However, Scotchmen are a conservative race and will walk round a fight rather than be forced into it, while all that is necessary to make an Irishman fight is to impugn his courage.

Mr. Murphy had seen the fight ahead of the Retriever and he did not blame Mr. MacLean for side-stepping it. Indeed, he had intended pursuing the same course; but Matt Peasley, by his latest remark, had rendered that impossible. To desert now would savor of dishonor; and, moreover, Matt Peasley, though master, had called him by his Christian name. Mr.

Murphy touched his forelock respectfully.

"I am not Scotch," he announced, with a slight emphasis on the p.r.o.noun.

"Shame on you, Angus MacLean--ditching the skipper like that!"

"Sticks an' stones may break ma bones, but names'll never hur-rt me," Mr. MacLean retorted. "I tell ye I dinna care for creosote in ma porridge." And he followed Matt Peasley aft, where the latter paid him off and gave him five minutes to pack and get off the ship. Immediately after supper the cook followed the second mate; but, since the former was a j.a.p and probably the worst marine cook in the world, his departure occasioned no heartache.

"We'll board at the mill cook-house until we're loaded, Mike," Matt Peasley informed the mate. "They have a good c.h.i.n.k up there."

Mr. Murphy sighed as he loaded his pipe and struck a match for it.

"It does look to me, sir," he replied, with that touch of conscious superiority so noticeable in the Celt, "as though Cappy Ricks might have slipped this cargo to a Dutchman."

The Retriever commenced taking on cargo at seven o'clock the following morning, with Mr. Murphy on shipboard and Matt Peasley on the dock superintending the gang of stevedores. Ordinarily the masters of lumber freighters ship their crews before commencing to load, in order that sailors at forty dollars a month may obviate the employment of an equal number of stevedores at forty cents an hour; but Mr. Murphy, out of his profound experience, advised against this course, as tending to spread the news of the Retriever's misfortune and militate against securing a crew when the vessel should be loaded and lying in the stream ready for sea. Men employed now, he explained, would only desert. The thing to do was to let a Seattle crimp furnish the crew, sign them on before the shipping commissioner in Seattle, bring them aboard drunk, tow to sea, and let the rascals make the best of a bad bargain.

The hold was about half filled, and the ship carpenters were at work cutting ports in the Retriever's bows, when Matt Peasley discovered that the mill did not have in hand any order for lumber to be used as stowage to snug up the c.u.mbersome cargo below decks and keep it from rolling and working in a seaway. Accordingly he wired his owners as follows:

Cosmopolis, Washington, July 7, 19--.

Blue Star Navigation Company, 258 California St., San Francisco, California.

No stowage.

Peasley.

Cappy Ricks having deliberately conspired to hang a series of dirty cargoes on his newest skipper, for the dual purpose of teaching Matt Peasley his place and discovering whether he was worthy of it, grinned evilly when he received that two-word message; and, not to be out-done in brevity, he dictated this answer:

San Francisco, California, July 7, 19--.

Captain Matthew Peasley, Master Barkentine Retriever, Care Weatherby's mill, Cosmopolis, Wash.

Know it.

Blue Star Navigation Company.

Matt Peasley's cheeks burned when he read that message. Indeed, could Cappy Ricks have been privileged to hear the terse remarks his telegram elicited, there is no doubt he would have sent Mr. Skinner up to the custom-house immediately to file a certificate of change of master.

"Ha!" Mr. Murphy snorted when Matt showed him the message. "I get the old sinner now. This is to be a grudge fight, Captain Matt. You wished yourself onto him in Cape Town against his will, and now he's made up his mind that so long as you wanted the job it's yours--only he'll make you curse the day you ever moved your sea chest into the skipper's cabin. He's going to send us into dogholes to load and open roadsteads to discharge; and if he can find a dirty cargo anywhere we'll get it.

But it's carrying a grudge too far not to give us stowage."

"Well, it's his ship," Matt Peabody declared pa.s.sionately. "If the old thief can gamble on good weather I guess I can gamble on my seamanship--and yours."

The mate inclined his head at the delicate compliment; and Matt, observing this, decided that a few more of the same from time to time would do much to alleviate a diet of creosote.

CHAPTER XIII. AN OLD FRIEND RETURNS AND CAPPY LEADS ANOTHER ACE

Three days before the Retriever finished loading, the captain wired a trustworthy Seattle crimp recommended by Mr. Murphy, instructing him to send down a second mate, eight seamen and a good cook--and to bring them drunk, because the vessel was laden with creosoted piling. Captain Noah Kendall, Matt's predecessor on the Retriever, had been raised on clipper ships and as he grew old had allowed himself the luxury of a third mate, to which arrangement Cappy Ricks, having a certain affection for Captain Noah, had never made any objection; but something whispered to Matt Peasley that the quickest route to Cappy's heart would be via a short payroll, so he concluded to dispense with a third mate and tack ten dollars a month extra on the pay-check of the excellent Murphy.

The Retriever was lying in the stream fully loaded when the crew arrived, convoyed by the crimp's runner. In accordance with instructions they were drunk, the crimp having furnished his runner with a two-gallon jug of home-made firewater upon leaving Seattle. One man--the second mate--was fairly sober, however, and while the launch that bore him to the Retriever was still half a mile from the vessel the breezes brought him an aroma which could not, by any possibility, be confused with the concentrated fragrance of the eight alcoholic breaths being exhaled around him. Muttering deep curses at his betrayal, he promptly leaped overboard and essayed to swim ash.o.r.e. The runner pursued him in the launch, however, and gaffed him by the collar with a boat-hook; the launch-man, for a consideration, aided the runner, and the unwilling wretch was carried struggling to purgatory.

"Oh, look who's here!" Mr. Murphy yelled to the skipper, as the bedraggled second mate was propelled forcibly up the ship's companion-ladder to the waiting arms of the first mate. "Welcome home, Angus, my lad."

It was Mr. MacLean, their quondam second mate, cast back on the deckload of the Retriever by the resurgent tide of maritime misfortune. Mr.

Murphy sat down and held himself by the middle and laughed until the tears ran down his ruddy cheeks, while Matt Peasley joined heartily in the mirth. The unfortunate Mr. MacLean also wept--but from other causes, to wit--grief and rage.

"I'm happy to have you with us again, Mr. MacLean," Matt saluted the second mate. "While your courage and loyalty might be questioned, your ability may not. So the crimp swindled you, eh? Told you he wanted you for another ship and then switched the papers on you, eh?"

"You should never trust a crimp, Angus," Mr. Murphy warned him. "And you should never do business with them unless you're cold sober. Let this be a lesson to you, my lad. Never be a drinking man and you'll never have to go to a crimp for a snug berth. Run along to your old room, now, Angus, and shift into some dry clothes, if you expect to finish the voyage."

"I'll gie ye ma worrd I'll desert in th' discharrgin' port!" Mr. MacLean burred furiously. "Ye hae me noo, body an' bones--"

"Aye, and we'll keep you, Angus. Have no fear of that. And you'll not desert in the discharging port. I'll see to that," Matt Peasley a.s.sured him.

When the last man had been a.s.sisted aboard Matt signaled for the tug he had engaged. By the time she had hooked on and towed them over the bar three of the seamen were sober enough to a.s.sist the skipper and the mates in getting all plain sail, with the exception of the square sails, on her, and, with a spanking nor'west breeze on her quarter she rolled away into the horizon.

Despite the fact that the Retriever's bottom was rather foul with marine growth, and the further fact that her master had to lay her head under her wing in a blow which, with an ordinary cargo, he would have bucked right into, the run to Antof.a.gasta was made in average time. And when Matt Peasley went ash.o.r.e to report by cable to his owners he discovered that Cappy Ricks had provided him with a cargo of nitrate for Makaweli.

"What did I tell you, sir?" Mr. Murphy growled when the captain informed him of the owners' orders. "I tell you, sir, the dirtiest cargo Cappy Ricks can find is too good for us. Praise be, the worst we can get at Makaweli is a sugar cargo."

Mr. Murphy's grudge against nitrate lay in the annoyance incident to taking on the cargo properly. Nitrate is very heavy and cannot, like sugar, be loaded flush with the hatches, thus rendering shifting of the cargo impossible. In loading nitrate a stout platform must be erected athwart ship, above the keelsons, in order that the foundation of the cargo may be laid level; for, as the sacked nitrate is piled, the pile must be drawn in gradually until the sides meet in a peak like a roof.

It must then be braced and battened securely with heavy timbers from each side of the ship, in order that the dead weight may be held in the center of the ship and keep her in trim. Woe to the ship that shifts a cargo of nitrate in a heavy gale; for it is a tradition of the sea that, once a vessel rolls her main yard under, she will not roll it back, and ultimately is posted at Lloyd's as missing.

When the cargo was out Mr. Murphy went ash.o.r.e and purchased a lot of Chinese punk, which he burned in the hold, with the hatches battened down, while Mr. MacLean, who had once been a druggist's clerk, and who, by the way, had concluded to stay by the ship, sloshed down the decks with an aromatic concoction mixed by a local apothecary. The remnant of their spoiled stores Matt Peasley, like a true Yankee, sawed off to good advantage on a trustful citizen of Antof.a.gasta, and credited the ship with the proceeds; after which he got his nitrate aboard and squared away for the Hawaiian Islands.

The run to Makaweli was very slow, for the ship was logy with the gra.s.s and barnacles on her bottom. At Makaweli he found a sugar cargo awaiting him for discharge at Seattle; and, thanks to the northwest trades at her quarter, the Retriever wallowed home reasonably fast.

CHAPTER XIV. INSULT ADDED TO INJURY