_ CHAPTER XLVI. A SHIP FORGOTTEN
The Blue Star Navigation Company's big steam schooner Amelia Ricks, northbound to load lumber at Aberdeen in command of a skipper who revered his berth to such an extent that he thought only of pleasing Mr. Skinner by making fast time, thus failing to take into consideration a two-mile current setting shoreward, had come to grief. Her skipper had cut a corner once too often and started overland with her right across the toe of Point Gorda. Her wireless brought two tugs hastening up from San Francisco; but, before they could haul her off at high tide, the jagged reef had chewed her bottom to rags, and in a submerged condition she was towed back to port and kicked into the dry dock at Hunters Point.
Cappy Ricks, feverishly excited over the affair, was very anxious to get a report on the condition of the vessel as soon as possible. He had planned to hire a launch and proceed to Hunters Point for a personal appraisal of the damage to the Amelia Ricks, but the northwest trades were blowing half a gale that day and had kicked up just sufficient sea to warn Cappy that seasickness would be his portion if he essayed to brave it in a launch. It occurred to him, therefore, to stay in the office and send somebody in whose knowledge of ships he had profound confidence. He got Matt Peasley on the phone at once.
"Matt," he said plaintively. "I want you to do the old man a favor, if you will. You heard about our Amelia Ricks, didn't you? Well, she's in dry dock at Hunters Point now, and they'll have the dock pumped out in two hours so we can see what her bottom looks like. I know she's ripped out clear up to the garboards and probably hogged, and I can hardly wait to make sure. The marine surveyor for the Underwriters will go down this afternoon to look her over, and then he'll take a day to present his long, typewritten report--and I can't wait that long. Will you skip down to Crowley's boathouse, hire a launch and charge it to us, and go down to see the Amelia? She'll be shored up by the time you get down there. Make a good quick examination of the damage and hurry back so I can talk it over with you. I go a heap on your judgment, Matt."
"I'll start right away, sir," Matt promised, glad of any opportunity to favor Cappy.
Two hours later, on his way back to the Mission Street bulkhead, he passed, in Mission Bay, a huge, rusty red box of a steel freighter, swinging at anchor. Under ordinary weather conditions Matt would have paid no attention to her; but, as has already been stated, the northwest trades were blowing a gale and had kicked up a sea; hence the steamer was rolling freely at her anchorage, and as the launch bobbed by to windward of her she rolled far over to leeward--and Matt saw something that challenged his immediate attention and provoked his profound disgust. The sides of the vessel below the water line were incrusted with barnacles and eelgrass fully six inches thick!
No skipper that ever set foot on a bridge could pass that scaly hulk unmoved. Matt Peasley said uncomplimentary things about the owners of the vessel and directed the launchman to pass in under her stern, in order that he might read her name. She proved to be the Narcissus, of London.
He stood in the stern of the launch, staring thoughtfully after the Narcissus, and before his mind there floated that vision of the barnacles and eelgrass, infallible evidence that the years had been long since the Narcissus had been hauled out.
"Do you know how long that steamer has lain there?" he queried of the launchman.
"I been runnin' launches to and from Hunters Point for seven years an' she was there when I come on the job," the latter answered.
"It's no place for a good ship," Matt Peasley murmured musingly. "She ought to be out on the dark blue, loaded and earning good money for her owners. I must find out why she isn't doing it."
Having rendered a meticulous report to Cappy on the condition of the Amelia Ricks, Matt, his brain still filled with thoughts of that lonely big steamer swinging neglected in Mission Bay among the rotting oyster boats and old clipper ships waiting to be converted into coal hulks, proceeded to the Merchants' Exchange where Lloyds' Register soon put him in possession of the following information:
The steamer Narcissus had been built in Glasgow in 1894 by Sutherland & Sons, Limited. She was four hundred and fifty-five feet long, fifty-eight feet beam and thirty-one feet draft. She had triple-expansion engines of two thousand indicated horse power, two Scotch boilers, and was of seventy-five hundred tons net register.
"Huh!" Matt murmured. "She'll carry forty per cent. more than her registered tonnage; if I had the loading of her she'd carry fifty per cent. more, at certain seasons of the year. I wonder why her owners have let her lie idle for eight years? I'll have to ask Jerry Dooley. He knows everything about ships that a landsman can possibly know."
Jerry Dooley had presided over the desk at the Merchants' Exchange for so many years that there was a rumor current to the effect that he had been there in the days when the water used to come up to Montgomery Street. Before Jerry's desk the skippers of all nations came and went; to him there drifted inevitably all of the little, intimate gossip of the shipping world. If somebody built a ship and she had trouble with her oil burners on the trial trip, Jerry Dooley would know all about it before that vessel got back to her dock again. If somebody else's ship was a wet boat, Jerry knew of it, and could, moreover, give one the name of the naval architect responsible; if a vessel had been hogged on a reef, Jerry could tell you the name of the reef, the date of the wreck, the location of the hog, and all about the trouble they had keeping her cargo dry as a result. To this human encyclopedia, therefore, did Matt Peasley come in his still-hunt for information touching the steamer Narcissus.
He opened negotiations by handing Jerry Dooley a good cigar. Jerry examined it, saw that it was a good cigar, and said: "I don't smoke myself, but I have a brother that does." He fixed Matt Peasley with an alert, inquisitive eye and said: "Well, what do you know, Captain?"
"Nothing much. What do you know about the steamer Narcissus?"
Jerry Dooley scratched his red head.
"Narcissus!" he murmured. "Narcissus! By George, it's a long time since I heard of her. Has she just come into port?" And he glanced apprehensively at the register of arrivals and departures, wondering if he hadn't overlooked the Narcissus.
"She's been in port eight years at least," Matt answered; "tucked away down in Mission Bay, with a watchman aboard."
"Oh, I remember now," Jerry replied. "She belongs to the Oriental Steamship Company. Old man Webb, of the Oriental Company, got all worked up about the possibilities of the Oriental trade right after the Spanish War. He had a lot of old bottoms running in the combined freight and passenger trade and not making expenses when the war came along, and the Government grabbed all his boats for transports to rush troops over to the Philippines. That was fine business for quite a while and the Oriental got out of the hole and made a lot of money besides. About that time Old Webb saw a vision of huge Oriental trade for the man who would go after it, and in his excitement he purchased the Narcissus. She carried horses down to the Philippines, and to China during the Boxer uprising; and when that business was over, and while old Webb was waiting for the expected boom in trade to the Orient, he got a lumber charter for her from Puget Sound to Australia. But she was never built for a lumber boat, though she carried six million five hundred thousand feet; she was so big and it took so long to load and discharge her that she lost twenty-five thousand dollars on the voyage. Run her in the lumber trade and the demurrage would break a national bank.
"Well, sir, after that lumber charter, old man Webb had a fit. He tried her out on a few grain charters, but she didn't make any money to speak of; and about that time the P. & S. W., with a view to grabbing some Oriental freight for their road, got the control of the steamship company away from Webb. The Oriental trade boom never developed, and the regular steamers, carrying freight and passengers, were ample to cope with what business the company was offered; so they didn't need the Narcissus.
"As I remember it, she was expensive to operate. She had a punk pair of boilers or she needed another boiler--or something; at any rate, she was a hog on coal, and they laid her up until such time as they could find use for her. I suppose after she was laid up a few years the thought of all the money it would cost to put her in commission again discouraged them--and she's been down in Mission Bay ever since."
"But the Canal will soon be open," Matt suggested. "One would suppose they'd put her in commission and find business for her between Pacific and Atlantic coast ports."
"You forget she's a foreign-built vessel and hence cannot run between American ports."
"She can run between North and South American ports," Matt replied doggedly. "I bet if I owned her I'd dig up enough business in Brazil and the Argentine to keep her busy. I'd be dodging backward and forward through the Canal."
"You would, of course," Jerry answered placidly; "but the Oriental Steamship Company cannot."
"Why?"
"Fifty-one per cent. of their stock is owned by a railroad--and under the law no railroad-owned ship may use the Canal."
Matt's eyebrows arched.
"Ah!" he murmured. "Then that's one of the reasons why she's a white elephant on their hands."
"Got a customer for her?" Jerry queried shrewdly. "A fellow ought to be able to pick the Narcissus up rather cheap."
Matt shook his head negatively.
"Happened to pass her in a launch a couple of hours ago, and the sight of the barnacles on her bottom just naturally graveled me and roused my curiosity. Much obliged for your information." And Matt excused himself and strolled over to the counter of the Hydro-graphic Office to look over the recent bulletins to masters.
The information that the whistling buoy off Duxbury Reef had gone adrift and that Blunt's Reef Lightship would be withdrawn for fifteen days for repairs and docking interested him but little, however. In his mind's eye there loomed the picture of that great red freighter, with her foul bottom, rusty funnel and unpainted, weather-beaten upper works.
"Her bridge is pretty well exposed to the weather," he murmured. "I'd build it up so the man on watch could just look over it. I noticed they'd had the good sense to house over her winches, so I dare say they're in good shape; her paint will have prevented rust below the water line, and I'll bet she's as sound as the day she was built. I think I'd paint her dead black, with red underbody and terra-cotta upper works." He pondered. "Yes, and I'd paint her funnel dead black, too, with a broad red band; and on both sides of the funnel, in the center of this red band, I'd have a white diamond with a black P in the center of it. By George, they'd know the Peasley Line as far as they could see it!"
He would have dreamed on had he not bethought himself suddenly of his modest capital--fifty thousand-odd dollars, out of which he owed Cappy Ricks a considerable sum on a promissory note due in one year. On such a meager bank balance it would not do to dream of buying a vessel worth nearly four hundred thousand dollars. Why, it would require twenty thousand dollars to put her in commission after all these years of idleness, and she had to have another boiler because she was a hog on coal; and, in addition, her operating cost would be between nine and ten thousand dollars a month.
Matt shook his head and looked round the great room as though in search of inspiration. He found it. His wandering glance finally came to rest on Jerry Dooley's alert countenance. Jerry crooked a finger at him and Matt strolled over to the desk.
"I've been watching you milling the idea round in your head," said Jerry. "I saw you reject it. You're crazy! It can be done."
"How?" Matt queried eagerly.
"Go get an option on her for the lowest price you can get--then form a syndicate and sell her to them at a higher price; or, if you don't want to do that, form your syndicate to buy her at the option price, and if you work it right you can get the job of managing owner. I want to tell you that two and one-half per cent. commission on her freight earnings would make a nice income."
"I wonder whom I could get into the syndicate?" Matt queried.
Jerry scratched his head.
"Well," he suggested, "you're mighty close to old Cappy Ricks. If you could hook him for a piece of her, the rest would be easy. Any shipping man on the Street will follow where Cappy Ricks leads. I'd try Pollard & Reilly; Redell, of the West Coast Trading Company; Jack Haviland, the ship chandler; Charley Beyers, the ship's grocer and butcher; A. B. Cahill & Co., the coal dealers; Pete Hansen, of the Bulkhead Hotel down on the Embarcadero--he's always got a couple of thousand dollars to put into a clean-cut shipping enterprise. Then there's Rickey, the ship-builder, and--yes, even Alcott, the crimp, will take a piece of her. I'd look in on Louis Wiley, the chronometer man, and Cox, the coppersmith--why I'd take in every firm and individual who might hope to get business out of the ship; and, you bet, I'd sell 'em all a little block of stock in the S. S. Narcissus Company."
"It might be done," Matt answered evasively. "I'll think it over."
He did think it over very seriously the greater portion of that night. As a result, instead of going to his office next morning he went to Mission Street bulkhead and engaged a launch, and forty minutes later, in response to his hail, the aged watchman aboard the Narcissus came to the rail and asked him what he wanted.
"I want to come aboard!" Matt shouted.
"Got a permit from the office?"
"No."
"Orders are to allow nobody aboard without a permit."
"How do you like the color of this permit?" Matt called back, and waved a greenback.
The answer came in the shape of a Jacob's ladder promptly tossed overside and Matt Peasley mounted the towering hulk of the Narcissus.
"What do you want?" the watchman again demanded as he pouched the bill Matt handed him.
"I want to examine this vessel from bilge to truck," Matt answered. "I'll begin with a look at the winches."
As he had surmised, the winches had been housed over and fairly buried in grease when the ship laid up; hence they were in absolutely perfect condition. The engines, too, had received the best of care, as nearly as Matt could judge from a cursory view. Her cargo space was littered up with a number of grain chutes, which would have to come out; and her boats, which had been stored in the empty hold aft, away from the weather, were in tiptop shape. She had a spare anchor, plenty of chain, wire cable and Manila lines, though these latter would doubtless have to be renewed in their entirety, owing to deterioration from age.
Her crew quarters were commodious and ample, and the officers' quarters all that could be desired; her galley equipment was complete, even to a small auxiliary ice plant. What she needed was cleaning, painting and scraping, and lots of it, also the riggers would be a few days on her standing rigging; but, so far as Matt could discern, that was all. From the watchman he learned that one Terence Reardon had been her chief engineer in the days when the Oriental Steamship Company first owned her.
From the Narcissus, Matt Peasley returned to the city and went at once to the office of the Marine Engineers' Association, where he made inquiry for Terence Reardon. It appeared that Terence was chief of the Arab, loading grain at Port Costa; so to Port Costa Matt Peasley went to interview him. He found Reardon on deck, enjoying a short pipe and a breath of cool air, and introduced himself.
"I understand you were the chief of the Narcissus at one time, Mr. Reardon," Matt began abruptly. "I understand, also, that under your coaxing you used to get ten miles out of her loaded."
Parenthetically it may be stated that Matt Peasley had never heard anything of the sort; but he knew the weaknesses of chief engineers and decided to try a shot in the dark, hoping, by the grace of the devil and the luck of a sailor, to score a bull's-eye. He succeeded at least in ringing the bell.
"Coax, is it?" murmured Terence Reardon in his deep Kerry brogue. "Faith, thin, the Narcissus niver laid eye on the day she could do nine an' a half wit' the kindliest av treatment. Wirrah, but 'tis herself was the glutton for coal. Sure, whin I'd hand in me report to ould Webb, and he'd see where she'd averaged forty ton a day, the big tears'd come into the two eyes av him--the Lord ha' mercy on his sowl!"
"You never had any trouble with her engines," Matt suggested.
"I had throuble keepin' shteam enough in the b'ilers to run thim; but I'll say this for her ingines: Give them a chancet an' they'd run like a chronometer."
"Would you consider an offer to leave the Arab and be chief of the Narcissus?" Matt queried. "I'm thinking of buying her, and if I do I'll give you twenty-five dollars a month above the regular Association scale."
"I'll go ye," murmured Reardon, "on wan condition: Ye'll shpend some money in her ingine room, else 'tis no matther av use for ye to talk to me. I'll not be afther breakin' me poor heart for the sake av twenty-five dollars a month. Sure, 'twould be wort' that alone to see the face av ye, young man, afther wan look at the coal bill."
"What repairs would you suggest? Do you think she needs another boiler? I noticed she has two. We could move those two over and make room for another."
"Do nothing av the sort, sir. Before ould Webb got her she'd been usin' bad wather down on the East African Coast, I'm thinkin', and it raised hell wit' her. 'Tis the expinse av retubin' her condensers that always frightened ould Webb, and whin he lost conthrol the blatherskite booby av a port ingineer the new owners app'inted come down to the ship, looked her over, wit' niver a question to me that knew the very sowl av her, and reported to the owners that what she needed was another b'iler." And Terence Reardon laughed the short, mirthless chuckle of the man who knows.
"Then," Matt continued, "the money should be spent--"
"In retubing her condensers," declared the engineer emphatically. "Do that an' do a good job on her, an' she'll have shteam enough for thim fine big ingines av hers on thirty-two ton a day, an' less. An' have a care would ye buy her until she ships a new crank shaft. She's a crack in the web av the afther crank shaft ye could shtick a knife blade into. She may run for years, but sooner or later some wan'll have a salvage claim agin ye if ye neglect it now. An', for the love av heaven, have nothin' to do wit' her big motor. 'Twas bur-rnt out by him that had her ahead av me--bad cess to him, whereiver he is! An' they did a poor, cheap job av windin' the armature agin. Ye'll be in hot wather wit' the electric-light system until ye put in a new motor.
"The rheostat on the searchlight niver was any good; and she may or may not need a new whistle--I dunno. Sure, the skipper niver blew it good an' long but the wanst; an', so help me, young man, I was lookin' at the shteam gauge whin he shtarted that prolonged blast--an' whin he finished the gauge had dhropped tin pounds! So up I go on the bridge to the ould man, an' says I to him, says I: 'Clear weather or thick fog, I'm tellin' ye to lave that whistle alone if ye expect to finish the voyage. Wan toot out av it means a ton av coal gone to hell an' a dhrop av blood out av the owner's heart! An' from that time on the best I iver hearrd out av that whistle was a sick sort av a sob."
Matt laughed as Terence Reardon's natural propensity for romancing came to the front. He thanked the chief for the latter's invaluable information, and, with a mental resolve to have Terence Reardon presiding over the engines of the Narcissus at no distant date, he returned to the city. _