Captain Scraggs | Page 9

"It'll hold," Gibney retorted doggedly. "It's a tule fog. They always hold.
Quit huggin' me. Your breath's bad. Them eggs, I guess."
Captain Scraggs, hurled forcibly backward, bumped into the pilot
house, but lost none of his enthusiasm. "You're a jewel," he declared.
"Oh, man, what a head! Whatever made you think of the Yankee
Prince?"
"Because," Mr. Gibney answered calmly, "there ain't no such ship, this
land of ours bein' a free republic where princes don't grow. Still, it's a
nice name, Scraggs, old tarpot--more particular since I thought it up in
a hurry. Eh, what?"
"Halvorsen," cried Captain Scraggs.
The lone deckhand emerged from a hole in the freight forward whither
he had retreated to escape the vegetable barrage put over by Captain
Scraggs when McGuffey left the ship. "Aye, aye, sir," he boomed.

"All hands below to the galley!" Scraggs shouted. "While we're waitin'
for this here towboat I'll brew a scuttle o' grog to celebrate the
discovery o' real seafarin' talent. Gib, my dear boy, I'm proud of you.
No matter what happens, I'll never have no other navigatin' officer."
"Don't crow till you're out o' the woods," the astute Gibney warned
him.
CHAPTER VI
In the office of the Red Stack Tug Boat Company, Captain Dan Hicks,
master of the tug Aphrodite; Captain Jack Flaherty, master of the
Bodega, and Tiernan, the assistant superintendent on night watch, sat
around a hot little box stove engaged in that occupation so dear to the
maritime heart, to-wit: spinning yarns. Dan Hicks had the floor, and
was relating a tale that had to do with his life as a freight and passenger
skipper.
"We was makin' up to the dock when I see the general agent standin' in
the door o' the dock office--an' all of a sudden I didn't feel so chipper
about havin' crossed Humboldt bar in a sou'easter. I saw the old man
runnin' his eye along forty foot o' twisted pipe railin', a wrecked bridge,
three bent stanchions an' every door an' window on the starboard side o'
the ship stove in, while the passengers crowded the rail lookin' cold an'
miserable, pea-green an' thankful. No need for me to do any explainin'.
He knew. He throws his dead fish eye up to me on what's left o' the
bridge an' I felt my job was vacant.
"'We was hit by a sea or two on Humboldt bar, sir,' I says, as if gettin'
hit by a sea or two an' havin' the ship gutted was an every-day
experience."
"'Is that so, Hicks?' says he sweetly. 'Well, now, if you hadn't told me
that I'd ha' jumped to the conclusion that a couple o' the mess boys had
got fightin' an' wrecked the ship before you could separate 'em. Why in
this an' that,' he says, 'didn't you stick inside when any dumb fool could
see the bar was breakin'?'

"'I wanted to keep the comp'ny's sailin' schedule unbroken, sir,' I says,
tryin' to be funny.
"'Well, Captain,' he says, 'it 'pears to me you've broken damned near
everything else tryin' to do it.'
"I was certain he was goin' to set me down, but the worst I got was a
three months' lay-off to teach me common sense----"
The telephone rang and Tiernan answered. Hicks and Flaherty hitched
forward in their chairs to listen.
"Hello.... Yes, Red Stack office.... Steamer Yankee Prince.... What's
that?... silk and rice?... Half a mile below the Cliff House, eh?... Sure,
I'll send a tug right away, Lindstrom."
Tiernan hung up and faced the two skippers. "Gentlemen," he
announced, "here's a chance for a little salvage money to-night. The
American steamer Yankee Prince is ashore half a mile below the Cliff
House. She's a big tramp with a valuable cargo from Hong Kong, with
her rudder gone and her crank shaft busted."
"It's high water at twelve thirty-seven," Jack Flaherty pleaded. "You'd
better send me, Tiernan. The Bodega has more power than the
Aphrodite."
This was the truth and Dan Hicks knew it, but he was not to be beaten
out of his share of the salvage by such flimsy argument. "Jack," he
pleaded, "don't be a hog all the time. The Yankee Prince is an eight
thousand ton vessel and it's a two-tug job. Better send us both, Tiernan,
and play safe. Chances are our competitors have three tugs on the way
right now."
"What a wonderful imagination you have, Dan. Eight thousand tons!
You're crazy, man. She's thirteen hundred net register and I know it
because I was in Newport News when they launched her, and I went
out with her skipper on the trial trip. She's a long, narrow-gutted craft,
with engines aft, like a lake steamer."

"We'll play safe," Tiernan decided. "Go to it--both of you, and