Cappy Ricks Retires | Page 4

resent Reardon because he's a Protestant."
"Not a bit of it. You're a Protestant, and don't I love you like a brother?"
Matt thought he saw the light. "Oh, I see," he replied. "It's because Reardon is an Irish Protestant."
"Almost--but not quite. God knows I hate the Orangemen for what they did to me and mine, but at least they've been Protestant since the time of Henry VIII. But the lad inside there has no business to be a Protestant. The Lord intended him for a Catholic--and he knows it. He's a renegade. I don't blame you for being a Protestant, Matt. It's none of my business."
Matt Peasley had plumbed the mystery at last. He had been reading a good deal in the daily papers about Home Rule for Ireland, the Irish Nationalists, the Ulster Volunteers, the Unionists, and so on, and in a vague way he had always understood that religious differences were at the bottom of it all. He realized now that it was something deeper than that--a relic of injustice and oppression; a hostility that had come to Mike Murphy as a heritage from his forbears--something he had imbibed at his mother's breast and was, for purposes of battle, a more vital issue than the interminable argument about the only safe road to heaven.
"I see," Matt murmured. "Reardon, being Irish, has violated the national code of the Irish--"
"You've said it, Matt. They're Tories at heart, every mother's son of them."
"What do you mean--Tories?"
"That they're for England, of course."
"Well, I don't blame them. So am I. Aren't you, Mike?"
"May God forgive you," Mike Murphy answered piously. "I am not. I'm for their enemies. I'm for anything that's against England. Ireland is not a colony. She's a nation. Man, man, you don't understand. Only an Irishman can, and he gets it at his mother's or his grandmother's knee--the word-of-mouth history of his people, the history that isn't in the books! Do you think I can forget? Do you think I want to forget?"
"No," Matt Peasley replied quietly; "I think you'll have to forget-- in so far as Terence Reardon is concerned. This is the land of the free and the home of the brave, and even when you're outside the three-mile limit I want you to remember, Mike, that the good ship Narcissus is under the American flag. The Narcissus needs all her space for cargo, Mike. There is no room aboard her for a feud. Don't ever poke your nose into Terence Reardon's engine-room except on his invitation or for the purpose of locating a leak. Treat him with courtesy and do not discuss politics or religion when you meet him at table, which will be about the only opportunity you two will have to discuss anything; and if Reardon wants to talk religion or politics you change your feeding time and avoid meeting him. I've taken you out of the old _Retriever,_ Mike, where you've been earning a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month, to put you in the Narcissus at two hundred and fifty. That is conclusive evidence that I'm for you. But Terence Reardon is a crackajack chief engineer, and I want you to remember that the Blue Star Navigation Company needs him in its business quite as much as it needs Michael J. Murphy, and if you two get scrapping I'm not going to take the trouble to investigate and place the blame. I'll just call you both up on the carpet and make you draw straws to see who quits."
"Fair enough," replied the honest Murphy. "If I can't be good I'll be as good as I can."
At that very instant Cappy Ricks was just discovering what kind of Irish Mr. Terence Reardon was.
The most innocent remark brought him the information he sought.
"Captain Murphy, whom you have just met, is to be master of the _Narcissus,_ chief," he explained. "He's a splendid fellow personally and a most capable navigator, and like you he's Irish. I'm sure you'll get along famously together."
Cappy tried to smile away his apprehension, for a still small voice whispered to him and questioned the right of Terence Reardon to call him brother.
Mr. Reardon's sole reply to this optimistic prophecy was a noncommittal grunt, accompanied by a slight outthrust and uplift of the chin, a pursing of the lips and the ghost of a sardonic little smile. Only an Irishman can get the right tempo to that grunt--and the tempo is everything. In the case of Terence Reardon it said distinctly: "I hope you're right, sir, but privately I have my doubts." However, not satisfied with pantomime, Mr. Reardon went a trifle farther--for reasons best known to himself. He laved the corner of his mouth with the tip of a tobacco-stained tongue and said presently: "I can't say, Misther Ricks, that I quite