Cappy Ricks Part 44

"That being tantamount to an admission on your part you cannot go into court with clean hands and force me to pay it," Matt flashed back at him, "I'll make you a proposition: You render me an accounting of the freight you collected on the cargo you stole from me, and I'll render you an accounting for the freight on the cargo I stole from you; then we'll get an insurance adjuster in and let him figure out, by general average, how much I would owe you if I had a conscience; then I'll give you my note, due in one year, at six per cent. for whatever the amount may be."

"Why not give me the cash?" Cappy pleaded. "You've got the money in bank."

"I know; but I want to use it for a year."

"Your note's no good to me," Cappy protested. "I told you once before it wasn't hockable at any bank."

"Then I'll withdraw my proposition."

"And present a subst.i.tute?"

"No, sir."

"I guess I'll take your note," Cappy said eagerly.

"I thank you for the compliment," Matt laughed; and Cappy, no longer able to dissemble, laughed with him--and their feud was over.

Consequently, post-mortems being in order, Matt went on: "I feel pretty sneaky about sticking you with all those bills on the Tillic.u.m that Morrow & Company defaulted on, just because the law enabled me to do so--but you did your best to ruin me; you wouldn't have showed me any pity or consideration."

"Not a dog-goned bit!" Cappy declared firmly. "I was out to bust you wide open for the good of your immortal soul. I would have taken your roll away from you, my son, by fair means--or--er--legal, if I could."

He looked up at Matt, with such a smile as he might have applied to a lovable and well-beloved son. "I hope you've got sporting blood enough in you to realize I didn't really want your little bank roll, Matt," he said half pleadingly. "I don't know just why I did it--except that I'm an old man and I know it; and I hate to be out of the running.

I suppose, just because I'm old, I wanted to take a fall out of you--you're so young; and--oh, Matt, you do make a sc.r.a.p so worth while!

"And, because I've lived longer in this world and fought harder for what I've got than you'll ever have to fight, I wanted to put about six feet of hot iron into your soul. You're a little bit too c.o.c.ksure, Matt. I tell you it's a mistake to hold your business compet.i.tor cheap. I want you to know that the fine gentleman who plays cribbage with you at your club to-night will lift the hair off your head down here on the Street to-morrow, because that's the game; and n.o.body shakes hands with you before giving you the poke that puts you to sleep. There are a lot of old men out in the almshouse just because they trusted too much in human nature; and I wanted to show you how hard and cruel men can be and excuse their piracy on the plea that it is business! I tell you, Matt Peasley, when you've lived as long as I have you'll know men for the swine they are whenever they see some real money in sight."

"Well, I shouldn't be surprised if you got the lesson over after all,"

Matt replied gravely. "You certainly made me step lively to keep from getting run over. You scared me out of a year's growth."

Cappy laughed contentedly.

"And what are you going to do with all this money you admit you owe me and decline to let me see the color of for a year?"

"Do you really want to know?" Matt queried.

"I'll take you to luncheon up at the Commercial Club if you'll tell me."

Matt bent low and whispered in Cappy's ear:

"I'm going to marry your daughter. I'll have to furnish a home and--"

"No excuse!" said Cappy fiercely. "Son, all you've got to buy is the wedding ring and the license, and some clothes. I'm stuck for the wedding expenses and you don't have to furnish a home. My house is big enough for three, isn't it?"

"But this thing of living with your wife's relations--" Matt began mischievously, until he saw the pain and the loneliness in Cappy's kind old eyes. "Oh, well," he hastened to add, "pull it off to suit yourself; but don't waste any time."

"In-fer-nal young scoundrel!" Cappy cried happily. "We've waited too long already."

Florry was a June bride, and the proudest and happiest man present, not excepting the groom, was old Cappy Ricks. He looked fully two inches taller as he walked up the church aisle, with Florry on his arm, and handed her over to Matt Peasley, waiting at the altar. And when the ceremony was over, and Matt had entered the waiting limousine with his bride, Cappy Ricks stood on the church steps among a dozen of his young friends from the wholesale lumber and shipping trade and made a brief oration.

"Take a good look at him, boys," he said proudly. "You fresh young fellows will have to tangle with him one of these bright days; and when you do he'll make h.e.l.l look like a summer holiday to you. See if he doesn't!"

Later, when Matt and Florry, about to leave on their honeymoon, were saying good-bye, Matt put his huge arm round Cappy and gave him a filial hug. Cappy's eyes filled with tears.

"I guess we understand each other, sonny," he said haltingly. "I've wanted a son like you, Matt. Had a boy once--little chap--just seven when he died--might have been big like you. I was the runt of the Ricks'

tribe, you know--all the other boys over six feet--and his mother's people--same stock. I--I--"

Matt patted his shoulder. Truly he understood.

CHAPTER XLVI. A SHIP FORGOTTEN

The Blue Star Navigation Company's big steam schooner Amelia Ricks, northbound to load lumber at Aberdeen in command of a skipper who revered his berth to such an extent that he thought only of pleasing Mr.

Skinner by making fast time, thus failing to take into consideration a two-mile current setting sh.o.r.eward, had come to grief. Her skipper had cut a corner once too often and started overland with her right across the toe of Point Gorda. Her wireless brought two tugs hastening up from San Francisco; but, before they could haul her off at high tide, the jagged reef had chewed her bottom to rags, and in a submerged condition she was towed back to port and kicked into the dry dock at Hunters Point.

Cappy Ricks, feverishly excited over the affair, was very anxious to get a report on the condition of the vessel as soon as possible. He had planned to hire a launch and proceed to Hunters Point for a personal appraisal of the damage to the Amelia Ricks, but the northwest trades were blowing half a gale that day and had kicked up just sufficient sea to warn Cappy that seasickness would be his portion if he essayed to brave it in a launch. It occurred to him, therefore, to stay in the office and send somebody in whose knowledge of ships he had profound confidence. He got Matt Peasley on the phone at once.

"Matt," he said plaintively. "I want you to do the old man a favor, if you will. You heard about our Amelia Ricks, didn't you? Well, she's in dry dock at Hunters Point now, and they'll have the dock pumped out in two hours so we can see what her bottom looks like. I know she's ripped out clear up to the garboards and probably hogged, and I can hardly wait to make sure. The marine surveyor for the Underwriters will go down this afternoon to look her over, and then he'll take a day to present his long, typewritten report--and I can't wait that long. Will you skip down to Crowley's boathouse, hire a launch and charge it to us, and go down to see the Amelia? She'll be sh.o.r.ed up by the time you get down there.

Make a good quick examination of the damage and hurry back so I can talk it over with you. I go a heap on your judgment, Matt."

"I'll start right away, sir," Matt promised, glad of any opportunity to favor Cappy.

Two hours later, on his way back to the Mission Street bulkhead, he pa.s.sed, in Mission Bay, a huge, rusty red box of a steel freighter, swinging at anchor. Under ordinary weather conditions Matt would have paid no attention to her; but, as has already been stated, the northwest trades were blowing a gale and had kicked up a sea; hence the steamer was rolling freely at her anchorage, and as the launch bobbed by to windward of her she rolled far over to leeward--and Matt saw something that challenged his immediate attention and provoked his profound disgust. The sides of the vessel below the water line were incrusted with barnacles and eelgra.s.s fully six inches thick!

No skipper that ever set foot on a bridge could pa.s.s that scaly hulk unmoved. Matt Peasley said uncomplimentary things about the owners of the vessel and directed the launchman to pa.s.s in under her stern, in order that he might read her name. She proved to be the Narcissus, of London.

He stood in the stern of the launch, staring thoughtfully after the Narcissus, and before his mind there floated that vision of the barnacles and eelgra.s.s, infallible evidence that the years had been long since the Narcissus had been hauled out.

"Do you know how long that steamer has lain there?" he queried of the launchman.

"I been runnin' launches to and from Hunters Point for seven years an'

she was there when I come on the job," the latter answered.

"It's no place for a good ship," Matt Peasley murmured musingly. "She ought to be out on the dark blue, loaded and earning good money for her owners. I must find out why she isn't doing it."

Having rendered a meticulous report to Cappy on the condition of the Amelia Ricks, Matt, his brain still filled with thoughts of that lonely big steamer swinging neglected in Mission Bay among the rotting oyster boats and old clipper ships waiting to be converted into coal hulks, proceeded to the Merchants' Exchange where Lloyds' Register soon put him in possession of the following information:

The steamer Narcissus had been built in Glasgow in 1894 by Sutherland & Sons, Limited. She was four hundred and fifty-five feet long, fifty-eight feet beam and thirty-one feet draft. She had triple-expansion engines of two thousand indicated horse power, two Scotch boilers, and was of seventy-five hundred tons net register.

"Huh!" Matt murmured. "She'll carry forty per cent. more than her registered tonnage; if I had the loading of her she'd carry fifty per cent. more, at certain seasons of the year. I wonder why her owners have let her lie idle for eight years? I'll have to ask Jerry Dooley. He knows everything about ships that a landsman can possibly know."

Jerry Dooley had presided over the desk at the Merchants' Exchange for so many years that there was a rumor current to the effect that he had been there in the days when the water used to come up to Montgomery Street. Before Jerry's desk the skippers of all nations came and went; to him there drifted inevitably all of the little, intimate gossip of the shipping world. If somebody built a ship and she had trouble with her oil burners on the trial trip, Jerry Dooley would know all about it before that vessel got back to her dock again. If somebody else's ship was a wet boat, Jerry knew of it, and could, moreover, give one the name of the naval architect responsible; if a vessel had been hogged on a reef, Jerry could tell you the name of the reef, the date of the wreck, the location of the hog, and all about the trouble they had keeping her cargo dry as a result. To this human encyclopedia, therefore, did Matt Peasley come in his still-hunt for information touching the steamer Narcissus.

He opened negotiations by handing Jerry Dooley a good cigar. Jerry examined it, saw that it was a good cigar, and said: "I don't smoke myself, but I have a brother that does." He fixed Matt Peasley with an alert, inquisitive eye and said: "Well, what do you know, Captain?"

"Nothing much. What do you know about the steamer Narcissus?"

Jerry Dooley scratched his red head.

"Narcissus!" he murmured. "Narcissus! By George, it's a long time since I heard of her. Has she just come into port?" And he glanced apprehensively at the register of arrivals and departures, wondering if he hadn't overlooked the Narcissus.