_ CHAPTER III. UNDER THE BLUE STAR FLAG
Matt had been attracted to the barkentine Retriever for two very potent reasons--the first was a delicious odor of stew emanating from her galley; the second was her house flag, a single large, five-pointed blue star on a field of white with scarlet trimming. Garnished left and right with a golden wreath and below with the word Captain, Matt Peasley knew that house flag, in miniature, would look exceedingly well on the front of a uniform cap; for he now made up his mind to enter one service and stick to it until his abilities should receive their inevitable reward. To ship as a foremast hand and rise to captain would be a proud record; so Matt throttled his pride and faced the future with confidence, and a stomach quite filled with very good beef stew.
From the cook he learned that the Retriever carried a million feet of lumber; that she was owned by Cappy Ricks; that Cappy Ricks was the president of the Blue Star Navigation Company, and the most contemptible old scoundrel in all the world; that the skipper was a blue-nose and a devil and a fine man rolled into one; that the barkentine could sail like a yacht; and that presently they would up-hook and off to Grays Harbor, Washington, there to load a cargo of fir lumber for Cape Town. And would Matt mind slipping ashore and buying the cook a bottle of whiskey, for which the latter would settle very minute he could get an advance out of the Old Man. No? Disgusted, the cook rattled his pans and dismissed Matt as one unworthy of further confidence.
Just before the tug came alongside to snake her outside the Heads, the mate came aboard with his lee rail pretty well under and was indiscreet enough to toss a piece of his lip at the Old Man. Five minutes later he was paid and off and kicked out on the dock, while the cook packed his sea bag and tossed it overside after him. The captain, thereupon, bawled for the second mate, who came running. Matt noticed this and decided that should the Old Man ever bawl for him he would come running too.
"Mr. Swenson, you have a chief mate's license, have you not?"
"Yes, sir."
"Very well. You're the first mate. Mr. Lindstrom"--turning to the bosun--"you've waited a year for your chance, and here it is. You're the second mate. Bosun!" He was looking straight at Matt Peasley as he spoke. Matt did not stir. "Hey, there," the skipper roared, "you big mountain of meat, step lively!"
Matt stepped lively.
"I am not the bosun, sir," he explained. "I'm just A.B."
"How dare you contradict me?" the Old Man growled. "I tell you, you don't know what you are yet, barring the fact that you're an American, and the only one, with the exception of myself, in the whole damned Scowegian crew. Do you think you could get away with a bosun's job?"
"I could get away with your job if I had the chance, sir," Matt declared, almost impudently.
"There she blows!" the Old Man declared. "Bless me, if you're not a Native Son! Nobody but a Native Son would be that fresh. I suppose this is your second voyage, you puling baby?"
Matt Peasley's dander was up instantly.
"I'm sailor enough to know my way alow or aloft in any weather, sir," he retorted.
The captain saw his opening and struck.
"What's the ring-tail?" he demanded.
"It's a studdin'-s'l on the gaff of a fore-an'-aft, sail, sir. You haven't got one on the Retriever, sir."
"Huh! You've been reading W. Clark Russell's sea yarns," the skipper charged. "He was quite a pen-an'-paper sailor when it came to square-rigged ships, but he didn't have much to say about six-masted schooners. You see, they didn't build them in his day. Now then, son, name the sticks on a six-legged schooner, and be sure and name 'em right."
"Fore, main, mizzen, spanker, jigger and driver, sir," Matt fired back at him.
"Bully for you, my son. You're the third mate. Cappy Ricks allows me the luxury of a third mate whenever I run across a young fellow that appears to be worth a whoop in hell, so grab your duds, and go aft, and don't bring any cockroaches with you. I'll dig up a bosun among the squareheads."
"Thank you, sir."
"Name?"
"Mr. Peasley, sir."
Since he was no longer an A B., young Matt concluded he might as well accord himself the respect due him as a ship's officer; so he tacked on the Mister, just to show the Old Man he knew his place. The master noted that; also, the slurring of the sir as only a sailor can slur it.
"I shouldn't wonder if you'd do," he remarked as Matt passed him on his way to the forecastle for his dunnage.
On his way back he carried his bag over his shoulder and his framed license in his left hand. Two savages were following with his sea chest.
"I do declare!" the skipper cried. "If that lubberly boy hasn't got some sort of a ticket! Let me see it, Mr. Peasley." And he snatched it out of his grasp.
"So, you're a first mate of sail, for any ocean and any tonnage, eh?" he said presently. "Are you sure this ticket doesn't belong to your father?"
"Sir," declared the exasperated Matt, "I never asked you for this job of third mate; and if I've got to stomach your insults to hold it down I don't want it. That's my ticket and I'm fully capable of living up to it."
"I'm glad to hear that, Mr. Peasley, because if you're not I'll be the first one to find it out--and don't you forget it! I'll have no marine impostors aboard my ship. Where do they ship little boys before the mast, Mr. Peasley?"
"On the Grand Banks, sir."
"I beg your pardon," said the skipper; "but really I thought you were a Native Son. My father was drowned there thirty years ago."
"The Peasleys have all died on the Banks sir," Matt replied, much mollified.
"We'll go down into my cabin and drink a toast to their memory, Mr. Peasley. It isn't often we skippers out here meet one of our own."
It is hard for a Down-Easter, even though he may have lost the speech of his people, not to be, partial to his own; and Captain Noah Kendall, of the barkentine Retriever, was all the cook had declared him to be. He scolded his Norsk mates so bitterly while the vessel was taking on cargo at Grays Harbor that both came and asked for their time an hour before the vessel sailed. However, the old man was aware they would do this, for he had handled that breed too long not to know that the Scandinavian sailor on the Pacific Coast quits his job on the slightest pretext, but never dreams of leaving until he knows that by so doing he can embarrass the master or owners. Even if the mates had not quit, Kendall would have discharged them, for it had been in his mind to try Matt Peasley out as chief mate, and acquire a second mate with a sweeter disposition than that possessed by the late incumbent.
No sooner had the Norsk mates departed than Captain Noah Kendall paid a visit to Captain McBride in command of the schooner Nokomis (also a Blue Star vessel), which had arrived that day and was waiting for the Retriever's berth at the mill dock, in order to commence loading.
"Mac," quoth Captain Noah, "what kind of a second mate have you got?"
"A no-good Irish hound named Murphy," McBride replied promptly, for he had heard rumors of war aboard the Retriever and something told him Kendall had come to borrow his second mate, in order that the Retriever might tow out immediately. A canny, cunning lad was McBride, but for all his Scotch blood he was no match for Captain Noah Kendall.
"I heard he wasn't worth two squirts of bilge water," Captain Noah lied glibly. "However, I'll take him off your hands and reimburse you for the expense of bringing his successor down from Seattle or up from San Francisco. My two mates have just asked to be paid off, and despite the fact that they have signed articles, I've let them go. No use going to sea with a pair of sulky mates, you know. Fortunately, I had a young Down-Easter aboard and I've put him in as first mate--"
"Noah," urged McBride. "I wouldn't advise you to take this man Murphy."
"Beggars can't be choosers," Captain Noah replied mournfully. "The tide serves in half an hour and the tug is alongside the Retriever now. If I have to wire to Seattle for a second mate I may not be able to get one--and if I am forced to wire to San Francisco I may be stuck here a week. I've shipped my crew and paid them all in advance, and if I don't get to sea in an hour I'll lose every man Jack of them, and have it all to do over again."
"Well, I'll speak to the fellow for you, Noah," McBride suggested, and darted out of the cabin to interview the said Murphy. Two minutes later he was back.
"Sorry, Noah, but Murphy says he wouldn't sign up for a trip to Cape Town at chief mate's wages."
"I'm sorry, too, Mac," Captain Noah answered resignedly. "I'm sorry you're such a liar. My grief is only compensated by the knowledge that Murphy is not aboard the Nokomis at this minute, and, if you did any talking while you were out on deck a minute ago you must have talked to yourself. Do I get this man, Murphy and thus save the Blue Star Navigation Company five hundred dollars or must I wire Cappy Ricks to wire you to do your duty by the company?"
"You infernal thief," shouted McBride, "you're taking the best second mate I've had in years."
"Never mind that. Do I get Mike Murphy peaceably or--"
"You've got him already" McBride charged.
"You're better at telling the truth than you are at lying, Angus McBride. You'll have plenty of time to get a second mate while the Nokomis is loading, and you can send the bill for his railroad fare to Cappy Ricks and tell him to charge it to the Retriever."
McBride tried to appear aggrieved, but failed. He burst out laughing, and reached for the locker in which he kept the schooner's supply of grog.
"Would it was prussic acid," he growled.
"Don't say I went behind your back and stole your mate," Kendall retorted. "And if your second mate is as poor as your whiskey," he added, piling insult on to injury, "you can have him back when I return from Cape Town."
Matt Peasley felt that he was going to like Michael J. Murphy. The latter was Irish, but he had left Ireland at a very tender age and was, to all intents and purposes, a breezy American citizen, and while he wore a slight cauliflower in one ear, his broad, kindly humorous face and alert, bustling manner was assurance that he would be an easy man to get along with. When the Old Man introduced him to Matt, he extended a horny right hand that closed on Matt's like the jaws of a dredger, the while he ran an equally horny left hand up and down the chief mate's arm.
"I'm sure we'll get along famously together, Mr. Murphy," Matt suggested.
Again Mr. Murphy ran his hand over that great arm.
"You know it!" he declared with conviction.
Captain Noah laughed aloud, and as Matt scampered forward over the deckload, herding his savages before him, to receive the tug's breast line and make it fast on the bitts the skipper turned to Mr. Murphy.
"There's a lad for you," he declared.
"He has manners and muscle, and those are two things that seldom go together," Mr. Murphy rejoined. "He's Down-Easter, I see. Did Cappy Ricks send him to you, sir?"
"No--not that he wouldn't, however, if he'd ever met the boy. The crimp brought him aboard with the sweepings and scrapings of San Francisco."
"I hope he wasn't drunk--like the rest," Mr. Murphy answered anxiously. "'Twould be a sin to desecrate that lovely body with whiskey."
"He was bung up and bilge free--and that's why he's chief kicker now. The hawser's fast for'd, Mr. Murphy. Cast off your stern line."
"All clear for'd, sir," Matt Peasley's shout came ranging down the wind, and the tug snatched the big barkentine out from the mill dock into the stream where she cast her off, put her big towing hawser aboard, paid it out and started for Grays Harbor bar. _