_ CHAPTER XXVI. MATT PEASLEY IN EXILE
From Cappy Ricks' office Matt Peasley went to the rooms of the American Shipmaster's Association, entered the telephone booth and called up Florence Ricks. From the instant he first laid eyes on her, Miss Florry had occupied practically all of Matt's thoughts during every waking hour. He had assayed her and appraised her a hundred times and from every possible angle, and each time he decided that Florry was possessed of more than sufficient charm, good looks, sweetness and intelligence to suit the most exacting. Matt wasn't ultra-exacting and she suited him, and the fact that she was the sole heir to millions was the least of the sailor's considerations as he dropped his nickel down the slot. Neither did the identity of the young lady's paternal ancestor constitute a problem, despite the recent interview with that variable individual. Matt regarded Cappy somewhat in the light of a mixed blessing; while he respected him he was a little bit afraid of him, and just at present he disliked him exceedingly. And lastly, his own social and economic status as second mate of the most wretched little steam schooner in the Blue Star Navigation Company's fleet, failed to enter even remotely into Matt's scheme of things.
The reason for this mental stand on his part was a perfectly simple and natural one. To begin, he was a stranger to caste other than that of decent manhood. The only rank he had ever known was that of a ship's officer, and that was merely a condition of servitude. When ashore he regarded himself as the equal of any monarch under heaven and treated all men accordingly. Since he had never known any of the restrictions of polite conventions behind which society entrenches itself in the world occupied by such pampered pets of fortune as Miss Florence Ricks, Matt Peasley failed to see a single sound reason why he should not indulge a very natural desire for Cappy's ewe lamb--for a singularly direct and forceful individual was Matthew. It was his creed to take what he could get away with, provided that in the taking he broke no moral, legal or ethical code; and if any thought of the apparent incongruity of a sailor's aspiring to the hand of a millionaire shipowner's daughter had occurred to him--which, by the way, it had not--he would doubtless have analyzed it thusly:
"There she is. Isn't she a queen? I want her and there isn't a single reason on earth why I shouldn't have her, unless it be that she doesn't want me. However, I'll learn all about that when I get good and ready, and if I'm acceptable Cappy Ricks and one of his employees are going to have a warm debate--subject, matrimony. What do I care for him? He's only her father, and I'll bet he wasn't half so well fixed as I am when he got married. I'll just play the game like a white man, and if Cappy doesn't like it he'll have to get over it."
"Miss Florence," Matt began, "this is Matt."
"Matt who?" she queried with provoking assumption of innocence.
"Door Mat," he replied. "Your daddy has just walked all over me at any rate."
"Oh, good morning, captain. Why, what has happened? Your voice sounds like the growl of a big bear."
"I suppose so. I'm hopping mad. The very first day I was ashore I turned a nice little trick for your father. I wasn't on the pay roll at the time, so we went into the deal together and chartered the Lion and the Unicorn to freight ore for the Mannheim people from Alaska to Seattle. I furnished the valuable information and the bright idea, and he capitalized both. The result of the deal was that he has his own steamer, the Lion, off his hands for four years, chartered at a fancy figure. Also he chartered the Unicorn from her owner at a cheap rate and rechartered at an advance of seventy-five dollars a day, and we split that profit between us. That gives me an income of thirty-seven and a half a day for the next four years, provided the Unicorn doesn't get wrecked. Naturally I wanted to stay ashore, when there's money to be made as easy as that--and he won't let me."
"Oh, I'm so sorry, captain."
"Well, that helps."
"You do not have to go to sea, do you?" Miss Ricks queried hopefully.
"Yes, Miss Florry, I do; that's what hurts. Your father induced me to invest all of my savings in a mortgage and a bond, and he has both locked up in the Blue Star safe with that ogre Skinner in charge, so I can't get them to realize on. Of course I could go to law and make him give them to me, but he knows I'll not do that, so he just sits there and defies me. And I neglected to take the proper business precautions about my daily income from the charter of the Unicorn, and because I cannot prove I have a divvy coming on that he says he won't give me a cent of it. He says he'll credit my account on the company's books, and when the Unicorn completes her charter he'll give it to me in a lump. In the meantime he's going to invest it for me, and without consulting me."
"Oh, dear," said Miss Ricks sympathetically. "I'm so sorry dad's such a busybody."
"You're not half so sorry as I am. I'm flat broke, and in order to eat I have to go to work, and in order to go to work I have to get a job, and in order to get the job I have to take what your father offers me--in fact, insists upon my taking. You see, Miss Florry, I'm almost a stranger in Pacific shipping. I don't know any owners except your father and I've never had any coastwise experience. It might be years before I could get another job as master of a sailing ship, and most steamship captains prefer to let some other captains break in their mates for them. So you see I'm helpless."
A silence. Then: "I'm going to sea in the Gualala to-morrow morning, Florry."
It was the first time he had dropped the "Miss," but he dropped it purposely now. Miss Ricks noticed the omission, which probably imbued her with the courage to voice again her excess of sympathy. Said she: "Oh, I'm so sorry, Matt!"
He thrilled at that. "Well," he answered humorously, "for the first time I'm glad I'm not a captain any more!"
Followed another brief silence, while Florry groped for the hidden meaning behind that subtle retort; then he continued: "Your father thinks I was a little presumptuous in calling at the house. He spoke to me about it, Florry, so I'm not going to call any more until he invites me. It's his house, you know. But he didn't say anything about not telephoning to you or seeing you outside his confounded house, so I suppose there's no necessity for me feeling badly about it, is there?"
This was a pretty direct feeler, but Florry parried it with feminine skill.
"Of course you can telephone me whenever you get to port. You mustn't take dad too seriously, Matt. Really he's very fond of you."
"Professionally, yes. Socially, no. I think he wants to give me a good chance to do something for myself in a business way later on, but he made it pretty plain that he is the only member of the Ricks family I'm to take seriously. Of course I expect to have something to say about that myself, Florry, but I didn't tell him so. He's your father, you know, and besides, a man can't make a very good showing on seventy-five dollars a month. But if the Unicorn lives to complete her charter I'll be up on Easy Street, even if I'll only be a plain sea captain when I come into that money. Of course now I'm only a second mate on the worst little steam schooner your father owns and I cannot say the things I want to say--I don't mean to your father, Florry, but to you--"
"But you're a captain now," Florry interrupted, in delicious terror hastening to obstruct any further discussion of what a seventy-five dollar man might have to say were he but in position to say it. "Why should you go to work as a second mate--"
"I've been a captain of sail, Florry. Of course, if I had never been master of a vessel of more than five hundred tons net register, or my sailing license had been limited to vessels of that tonnage, I should have to work up from second mate to master in steam. But any man who has been master of a vessel of more than five hundred tons net register for more than one year is entitled to apply for a license as master of steam vessels, and if he can pass the examination he can get his license."
"Then why don't you do that, Matt?" Florry inquired.
"I have. The idea of two years' probation as second and first mate didn't appeal to me, so while I was waiting round to join the Gualala I went up for my ticket as master of steam. I passed, but when I told your father I had a license to command the largest steam freighter he owns, he only laughed at me and told me the inspectors weren't running his business for him. Just because I'm not twenty-three years old he says I ought to have two years' experience in steam as mate before he gives me command of a vessel. He says I'd better learn the Pacific Coast like he knows his front lawn, or some foggy night I'll walk my vessel overland and the inspectors will set me down for a couple of years."
"Well, that sounds reasonable, Matt."
"Yes, I'll admit there's some justice in his contention, so I'm going to do it to please him, although I hate to have him think I'm a dog-barking navigator."
"Why, what's that?" Florry demanded.
"A dog-barking navigator is a coastwise blockhead that gets lost if he loses sight of land. He steers a course from headland to headland, and every little while on dark nights he stands in close and listens. Pretty soon he hears a dog barking alongshore. 'All right,' he says to the mate; 'we're off Point Montara. I know that Newfoundland dog's barking. He's the only one on the coast. Haul her off and hold her before the wind for four hours and then stand in again. When you pick up the bark of a foxhound you'll be off Pigeon Point.'"
Florry's laughter drowned a further description of the dog-barking navigator's wonderful knowledge of Pacific Coast canines, and after some small talk Matt said good-bye and hung up. When he left the telephone booth, however, he was a happier young man than when he had entered it, for he had now satisfied himself that while Cappy Ricks might arrogate to himself the right of proposing, his daughter could be depended upon to attend to the disposing. He went to his boarding house, paid his landlady, packed his clothes and sent them down to the Gualala, rubbing her blistered sides against Howard Street Pier No. 1. At seven o'clock next morning he was aboard her and at seven-five he superintended the casting off of the stern lines and his apprenticeship in steam had commenced. _