_ CHAPTER XXI. MATT PEASLEY MEETS A TALKATIVE STRANGER
Cappy Ricks' telegram to Matt, in care of the mill at Port Hadlock, arrived several hours after the Retriever, fully loaded with fir lumber, had been snatched away from the mill dock by a tug and started on her long tow to Dungeness, where the hawser would be cast off. It was not until the vessel came to a brief anchorage in the strait off Port Townsend, the port of entry to Puget Sound, and Matt went ashore to clear his ship, that the duplicate telegram sent in care of the Collector of the Port, was handed to him.
He read and reread it. The news it contained seemed too good to be true.
"I guess I won't clear her after all," he announced to the deputy collector.
The official nodded. "I didn't think you would," he replied. "I have a telegram from the custom-house at San Francisco, apprising me that Michael J. Murphy has been appointed master of the Retriever, so if she's to be cleared Captain Murphy will have to do the job."
"He's my mate, and if you'll wait about half an hour I'll go get the old Siwash," Matt replied happily, and started back to the Retriever in a hurry. He had been gone less than twenty minutes, a fact noted by the astute Murphy, who met his superior at the rail as the latter climbed up the Jacob's ladder.
"Why, you haven't cleared the old girl so soon, have you, sir?" he queried.
"Read that," Matt announced dramatically.
Mr. Murphy read the telegram. "Bust my bob-stay!" he murmured. "The dirty old assassin! The slimy old pile-worm! The blessed old duffer! After treating us like dogs for a year and a half he gives me the ship, sets you down for a two year apprenticeship in steam and says he's going to build you a four-million-foot freighter! The scoundrelly old renegade! Why, say, Matt, Cappy's been spilling the acid all over us and we never knew it. Somehow, I have a notion that if we had yelled murder when he was beating us he'd have had us both out of his employ while you'd be saying Jack Robinson."
"I believe you, Mike. But he needn't think he's going to grab two years of my precious young life before he'll trust me with a steamer. I have an unlimited license for sail, and if I can pass the examination for steam before the inspectors--and I can--I'll get my license immediately. Just consider the old boy's inconsistency, Mike. If a man can handle a square-rigged ship he ought to be trusted with anything; yet, when he gives me a steamer you'd think he was giving me a man's job! Fair weather or foul, you stand on the bridge and control your vessel with the engine room telegraph. Shucks! I wonder if that crotchety old joker thinks it will take me two years to learn how to dock a steam schooner?"
Mr. Murphy hitched his trousers, stuck his thumbs in his belt and glared at Matt Peasley. "See here, you," he declared, "you're a child wonder, all right, but the trouble with you is, you hate yourself too much. Listen to me, kid. I'm the skipper of the Retriever now and you're my friend, young Matt Peasley, so I can talk to you as a friend. You're a pretty skookum youth and I'd hate like everything to mix it with you, but if you start to veto the old man's orders you may look for a fine thrashing from me when I get back from Australia! I won't have you making a damned fool of yourself, Matt. If you are in command of a four-million-foot freighter by the time you're twenty-seven, you'll be the youngest skipper of steam afloat, and you ought to be down on your marrow bones giving thanks to the good Lord who has done so much for you, instead of planning insurrection against Cappy Ricks. The idea!"
"But what sense is there in waiting--"
"When I refereed the scrap between you and All Hands And Feet you took my advice, didn't you? You didn't say to me then: 'What sense is there in waiting? Let me go in and finish the job and have done with it,' did you?"
"But this is business, Mike. For a year and a half Cappy has been having a whole lot of fun out of me--"
"It might have been fun for him, but it came pretty near being the death of me," Mr. Murphy contradicted. "If that jag of green hides from Antofagasta was a joke, beware of Cappy Ricks when he's serious. He's serious about you, Matt. He's picked on you sight unseen, and he's going to do something for you. He's an old man, Matt. Let him have his way and you'll profit by it."
"Well, I'll see what he has to say, at any rate," Matt compromised, and they went below, Matt to pack his sea chest and Mr. Murphy to shave and array himself in a manner befitting the master of a big barkentine about to present himself at the custom-house for the first time to clear his ship.
An hour later Matt Peasley found himself sitting on his sea chest on the cap of the wharf, watching the Retriever slipping down the strait under command of Captain Michael J. Murphy, while a new chief mate, shipped in Port Townsend, counted off the watches. Presently she turned a bend and was gone; and immediately he felt like a homeless wanderer. The thought of the doughty Murphy in that snug little cabin so long sacred to Matt Peasley brought a pang of near jealousy to the late commander of the Retriever; as he reflected on the two years of toil ahead of him before men would again address him as Captain Peasley, he wondered whether the game really would be worth the candle; for he had all of a Down-Easter's love for a sailing ship.
He recalled to mind Mr. Murphy's favorite story of the old sailing skipper who went into steam and who, during his very first watch on the steamship's bridge, ordered the man at the wheel to starboard his helm, and then forgot to tell him to steady it--the consequence being that the helmsman held hard-a-starboard and the ship commenced to describe a circle; whereupon the old sailing skipper got excited and screamed: "Back that main yard!" Matt felt that should anything like that happen to him in steam and the news should ever leak out, he would have to go back to the Atlantic Coast rather than face the gibes of his shipmates on the Pacific.
The passenger boat from Victoria picked him up and set him down in Seattle that night, and the following morning he boarded a train for San Francisco to report to Cappy Ricks.
At luncheon in the dining car that day Matt Peasley found himself seated opposite a man who had boarded the train with him at Seattle. As the young captain plied his knife and fork he was aware that this person's gaze rested with something more than casual interest on his--Matt's--left forearm; whereupon the latter realized that his vis-a-vis yearned to see more of a little decoration which, in the pride of his first voyage, Matt had seen fit to have tattooed on the aforesaid forearm by the negro cook. So, since he was the best-natured young man imaginable, Matt decided presently to satiate his neighbor's curiosity.
"It's a lady climbing a ladder," he announced composedly and drew back his sleeve to reveal this sample of black art. "I have a shield and an eagle on my breast and a bleeding heart, with a dagger stuck through it, on my right forearm."
"I didn't mean to be rude," the other answered, flushing a little. "I couldn't help noticing the chorus lady's shapely calves when you speared that last pickle; so I knew you were a sailor. I concluded you were an American sailor before I learned that you advertise the fact on your breast, and I was wondering whether you belong in the navy or the merchant marine."
"I'm from blue water," Matt replied pleasantly. "You're in the shipping business, I take it."
"Almost--I'm a ship, freight and marine insurance broker." And the stranger handed over a calling card bearing the name of Mr. Allan Hayes. "I'm from Seattle."
"Peasley is my name, Mr. Hayes," Matt answered heartily, glad of this chance acquaintance with a man with whom he could converse on a subject of mutual interest. "I haven't any post-office address," he added whimsically.
"Going over to Columbia River to join your ship, I daresay," Mr. Hayes suggested.
"No, sir. I'm bound for San Francisco, to get a job in steam and work up to a captaincy."
"Wherein you show commendable wisdom, Mr. Peasley," the broker answered. "A man can get so far in a windjammer--a hundred a month in the little coasting schooners and a hundred and twenty-five in the big vessels running foreign--and there he sticks. In steam schooners a good man can command two hundred dollars a month, with a chance for promotion into a big freighter, for the reason that in steam one has more opportunity to show the stuff that's in one."
"How far are you going?" Matt demanded.
"I'm bound for San Francisco too."
"Good!" Matt replied, for, like most boys, he was a gregarious animal, and Mr. Hayes seemed to be a pleasant, affable gentleman. "I suppose you know most of the steam vessels on this coast?" he continued, anxious to turn the conversation into channels that might be productive of information valuable to him in his new line of endeavor.
Mr. Hayes nodded. "I have to," he said, "if I'm to do any business negotiating charters; in fact, I'm bound to San Francisco now to charter two steamers."
"Freight or passenger?"
"Freight. There's nothing for a broker in a passenger vessel. I'm scouting for two boats for the Mannheim people. You've heard of them, of course. They own tremendous copper mines in Alaska, but they can't seem to get the right kind of flux to smelt their ore up there; so they're going to freight it down to their smelter in Tacoma."
"I see. But how do you work the game to pay your office rent?"
"Why, that's very simple, Mr. Peasley. Their traffic manager merely calls me up and tells me to find two ore freighters for him. He doesn't know where to look for them, but he knows I do, and that it will not cost him anything to engage me to find them for him. Well, I locate the vessels and when I come to terms with the owners, and those terms are satisfactory to my clients, I close the charter and the vessel owners pay me a commission of two and a half per cent. on all the freight money earned under the charter. A shipowner generally is glad to pay a broker a commission for digging him up business for his ships--particularly when freights are dull."
Matt Peasley nodded his comprehension and did some quick mental arithmetic.
"Why, you'll make a nice little fee on those ore boats," he said. "I suppose it's a time charter."
"Four years," Mr. Hayes replied, and smiled fatly at the thought of his income. "Of course I'd make a larger commission if the freight rate was figured on a tonnage basis; but on long charters, like these I mention, the ships are rented at a flat rate a day or month. Say, for instance, I negotiate these charters at the rate of four hundred dollars a day, or eight hundred dollars a day for the two boats. Two and a half per cent. of eight hundred dollars is twenty dollars a day, which I will earn as commission every day for the next four years that the vessels are not in dry dock or laid up for repairs."
"And you probably will earn that by one day of labor," Matt Peasley murmured admiringly--"perhaps one hour of actual labor!"
Mr. Hayes smiled again his fat smile. He shrugged.
"That's business," he said carelessly. "An ounce of promotion is worth a ton of horse power."
"Well, I should say so, Mr. Hayes! But you'll have quite a search to find an ore boat on the Pacific Coast. There are some coal boats running to Coos Bay, but they're hardly big enough; and then I suppose they're kept pretty busy in the coal trade, aren't they? It seems to me that what you need for your business would be two of those big steel ore vessels, with their engines astern--the kind they use on the Great Lakes."
"That is exactly why I am going to San Francisco, Mr. Peasley. There are on this Coast two ships such as you describe--sister ships and just what the doctor ordered."
"What are their names?"
"The Lion and the Unicorn."
Matt Peasley paused, with a forkful of provender halfway to his mouth. The S.S. Lion, eh? Why, that was one of Cappy Ricks' vessels! He remembered passing her off Cape Flattery once and seeing the Blue Star house flag fluttering at the fore.
"Were they Lake boats originally?" he queried.
Mr. Hayes nodded.
"What are they doing out here?"
"Right after the San Francisco fire, when fir lumber jumped from a twelve-dollar base to twenty-five, lumber freights soared accordingly," Hayes explained. "Vessels that had been making a little money at four dollars a thousand feet, from Oregon and Washington ports to San Francisco, were enabled to get ten dollars; and anything that would float was hauled out of the bone yard and put to work. Old Man Ricks, of the Blue Star Navigation Company, was the first to see the handwriting on the wall; so he sneaked East and bought the Lion and the Unicorn. It was just the old cuss's luck to have a lot of cash on hand; and he bought them cheap, loaded them with general cargo in New York, and paid a nice dividend on them on their very first voyage under the Blue Star flag. When he got them on the Coast he put them into the lumber trade and they paid for themselves within a year.
"Then, just before the panic of 1907, old Ricks unloaded the Unicorn on the Black Butte Company for ten thousand dollars more than he paid for her--the old scamp! He's the shrewdest trader on the whole Pacific Coast. He had no sooner sawed the Unicorn off on the Black Butte people than the freight market collapsed in the general crash, and ever since then the owners of the Lion and the Unicorn have been stuck with their vessels. They're so big it's next to impossible to keep them running coastwise in the lumber trade during a dull period, and they're not big enough for the foreign trade. About the only thing they could do profitably was to freight coal, coal freights have dropped until the margin of profit is very meager; competition is keen and for the last six months the Lion and the Unicorn have been laid up."
Matt Peasley smiled.
"They'll be hungry for the business," he said, "and I'm sailor enough to see you'll be able to drive a bargain without much trouble."
"I ought to get them pretty cheap," Mr. Hayes admitted. "As you perhaps know, a vessel deteriorates faster when laid up than she does in active service; and an owner will do almost anything to keep her at sea, provided he can make a modest rate of interest on her cost price or present market value."
"Naturally," Matt Peasley observed as they rose from the table.
He purchased a cigar for Mr. Hayes, and as they retired to the buffet car to continue their acquaintance something whispered to Matt not to divulge to this somewhat garrulous stranger the news that he was a sea captain lately in the employ of the Blue Star Navigation Company and soon to enter that employ again. He had learned enough to realize that Cappy's bank roll was threatened by this man from Seattle; that with his defenses leveled, as it were, the old gentleman would prove an easy victim unless warned of the impending attack.
Therefore, since Matt had not sought Mr. Hayes' confidence nor accepted it under a pledge of secrecy, he decided that there could be nothing unethical in taking advantage of it. Plainly the broker had jumped to the conclusion that Matt was a common sailor--above the average in point of intelligence, but so young and unsophisticated that one need not bother to be reserved or cautious in his presence. Some vague understanding of this had come to Matt Peasley; hence throughout the remainder of the journey his conversations with the broker bore on every other subject under heaven except ships and shipowners. _