Cappy Ricks Part 15

The belief that they had come off victorious in their skirmish with Cappy Ricks cheered Matt Peasley and his mate for the first two weeks out from Puget Sound; after which the creosote commenced to season their food, and then the victory began to take on the general appearance of a vacuum. However, thanks to a clean keel and fair winds, they made a smas.h.i.+ng pa.s.sage and their sufferings were not unduly prolonged.

Immediately on his arrival at Antof.a.gasta the young skipper reported by cable to his owners, thereby eliciting the following reply from Cappy Ricks:

"You stole s.h.i.+p. If you value your ticket bring her back with cargo agent provides."

Naturally this somewhat cryptic cablegram roused Matt Peasley's curiosity. He could not rest until he had interviewed the agent--and after that sop to his inquisitiveness he returned to the Retriever a broken man. The loyal and disgusted Murphy read the trouble in the master's face.

"What new deviltry's afoot now, Matt?" he demanded, in his eagerness and sympathy forgetting the respect due his superior.

"Green hides, Mike!" the skipper answered, in his distress failing to notice the mate's faux pas and making one himself. "Green hides, old pal; and they stink something horrible. Back to Seattle with the dirty mess, and then another cargo of creosoted--"

"King's X!" yelled Mr. Murphy. "I crossed my fingers the minute your face appeared over the rail. I quit--and I quit as soon as this piling is out. I tell you I won't keep company with green hides. No, sir; I won't. I tell you I will--not--do it! Why, we might as well have a dead hog in the hold! Captain Matt, I hate to throw you down in a foreign port; but this--is absolutely--the finis.h.!.+"

"Do you value your ticket, Mike?" the captain queried ominously.

"What's a ticket when a man's lost his self-respect?" Mr. Murphy raved.

Matt handed him Cappy's cablegram and the mate read it.

"I think that bet goes double, Mike," the skipper warned him. "You signed for the round trip. I've got to go through--and there's strength in numbers."

"Well," said Mr. Murphy reluctantly, "I suppose I do attach a certain--er--sentimental value to my ticket."

"I thought you would. Cappy's got us by the short hair, Mike; and the only thing to do is to fly to it, with all sails set. We must never let on he's given us anything out of the ordinary."

Mr. Murphy s.h.i.+vered; for, as Cappy had remarked to Mr. Skinner, the mate was Irish, hence imaginative. He imagined he smelled the green hides already, and quite suddenly he gagged and sprang for the rail. Poor fellow! He had stood much of late and his stomach was a trifle sensitive from a diet of creosote straight.

Somehow they got the awful cargo aboard, though, at that, there were not sufficient hides to half load her; in consequence of which all hands realized that Cappy had merely given them this dab of freight to sicken them. They cursed him all the way back to Seattle, where the crew quit the minute the vessel was made fast to the dock.

CHAPTER XIX. CAPPY SEEKS PEACE

"Here's a telegram for you, sir," Mr. Murphy remarked when Matt Peasley came aboard after cas.h.i.+ng a draft on the Blue Star Navigation Company to pay off his crew. It proved to be from Cappy Ricks and said merely:

"Discharge that cargo of hides or take the consequences!"

"The old sinner thought I'd dog it, I suppose," Matt sneered, as he pa.s.sed the message to Mr. Murphy, who s.h.i.+vered as he read it. "I guess you're elected, Mike," the skipper continued. "The second mate has quit.

However, it isn't going to be very hard on you this time. I was speaking to the skipper of that schooner in the berth ahead of us, and he gave me a recipe for killing the perfume of a cargo of green hides."

"If he'd given it to us in Antof.a.gasta, I'd name a s.h.i.+p after him some day," Mr. Murphy mourned.

"Well, we've gotten it in time to be of some use," Matt declared. "You don't suppose I'm going to let this old snoozer Ricks get away with the notion that he put one over on us, do you? Shall we haul Old Glory down?

No! Never! I'll just switch off the laughing gas on Cappy Ricks," and the young skipper went ash.o.r.e and wired his managing owner as follows:

"Green hides are the essence of horror if you do not know how to handle them. Fortunately I do. Pour water on a green hide and you muzzle the stink. I judge from your last telegram you thought you handed me something."

When Cappy Ricks got that telegram he flew into a rage and refused to believe Matt Peasley's statement until he had first called up a dealer in hides and confirmed it. The entire office staff wondered all that day what made Cappy so savage.

By the following day, however, Cappy's naturally optimistic nature had rea.s.serted itself. He admitted to himself that he had fanned out, but still the knowledge brought him some comfort.

"He's walloped me so," Cappy soliloquized, "he just can't help writing and crowing about it. If I didn't do anything else I bet I've pried a letter out of him. It certainly will be a comfort to see something except a telegram and a statement of account from that fellow."

However, when the report of the voyage arrived, Mr. Skinner reported that it contained no letter. Cappy's face reflected his disappointment.

"I guess you'll have to go stronger than green hides to get a yelp out of that fellow," Mr. Skinner predicted.

"Why, there isn't anything stronger than a cargo of green hides, Skinner," Cappy declared thoughtfully. He clawed his whiskers a moment.

Then: "What have you got for her on the Sound, Skinner?"

"Nothing nasty, sir. We'll have to give him a regular cargo this time--that is, unless he quits. I've got a cargo for Sydney, ready at our own mill at Port Hadlock."

"Well, he hasn't resigned yet," Cappy declared; "so we might as well beat him to it. Wire him, Skinner, to tow to our mill at Port Hadlock and load for Sydney. If he believes we're willing to call this thing a dead heat he may conclude to stick. Tell him this is a nice cargo."

Again Cappy clawed his whiskers. "Sydney, eh?" he said musingly. "That's nice! We can send him over to Newcastle from there to pick up a cargo of coal, and maybe he'll come home afire! If we can't hand him a stink, Skinner, we'll put a few gray hairs in his head."

These instructions Mr. Skinner grudgingly complied with; and Matt Peasley, with his hatches wide open and buckets of punk burning in the hold to dispel the lingering fragrance of his recent cargo--concluding that, on the whole, he and Mr. Murphy had come through the entire affair very handsomely indeed--towed down to Hadlock and commenced to take on cargo. If Cappy Ricks was willing to declare a truce then Matt Peasley would declare one too.

Matt's peaceful acquiescence in his owner's program merely served to arouse Cappy Ricks' abnormal curiosity. The more he thought of Matt Peasley the greater grew his desire for a closer scrutiny. The most amazing man in the world had been in his employ a year and a half, and as yet they had never met; unless the Retriever should happen to be loaded for San Francisco years might elapse before they should see each other; and now that he had attained to his allotted three score years and ten Cappy decided that he could no longer gamble on the future.

He summoned Mr. Skinner.

"Skinner, my dear boy," he announced with the naive simplicity that made him so lovable. "I suppose it's very childish of me, but I have a tremendous desire to see this extraordinary fellow Peasley."

"You can afford to satisfy your slightest whim, Mr. Ricks," he replied.

"I'll load her for San Francisco after she returns from Australia. I daresay if he ever gets through the Golden Gate he'll call up at the office."

"Skinner, I can't wait that long. Many things may happen. Ahem!

Harump-h-h-h! Wire the man Peasley, Skinner, to have his photograph taken and forwarded to me immediately charging expense."

"Very well, sir," Mr. Skinner responded.

"Well, I'll be keel-hauled and skull-dragged," Matt Peasley declared to Mr. Murphy. "Here's a telegram from the owners demanding my photograph."

Mr. Murphy read the amazing message, scratched his raven poll, and declared his entire willingness to be d.a.m.ned.

"It's a trap," he announced presently. "Don't send it. Matt, you look about twenty years old and for the next few years, if you expect to work under the Blue Star flag, you must remember your face isn't your fortune. You've got to be pickled in salt for twenty years to please Cappy Ricks. If he sees your photograph he'll fire you, Matt. I know that old crocodile. All he wants is an excuse to give you the foot, anyhow."

"But he's ordered me to send it, Mike. How am I going to get out of it?"

As has been stated earlier in this tale, Mr. Murphy had an imagination.

"Go over into the town, sir," he said, "and in any photograph gallery you can pick up a picture of some old man. Write your name across it and send it to Cappy. He'll be just as happy, then, as though he had good sense."

"By George, I'll just do that!" Matt declared, and forthwith went ash.o.r.e.

He sought the only photographer in Port Hadlock. At the entrance to the shop he found a gla.s.s case containing samples of the man's art, and was singularly attracted to the photograph of a spruce little old gentleman in a Henry Clay collar, long mutton-chop whiskers, and spectacles.