Cappy Ricks Part 27

"Oh, very well. You're the boss, Mr. Ricks. But if I were in your place I would have an older and more experienced man to relieve him the moment he comes into the bay. You must remember, Mr. Ricks, that while he may run her very nicely during the summer months, he has had no experience on Humboldt Bay during the winter months--"

"Skinner, the only way he'll ever acc.u.mulate experience on that bar is to give him the opportunity."

"He'll take big risks. He's very young and headstrong."

"I admit he's fiery. But I promised him a s.h.i.+p, and he's earned her sooner than I planned, so, even if my decision loses the Quickstep for us, he shall have her. I'll be swindled if I ever did see the like of that boy Matt. He gets results. And do you know why, Skinner?"

"Because," Mr. Skinner replied coldly, "he's a huge, healthy animal, able and willing to fight his way in any s.h.i.+p, and at the same time clever enough to take advantage of your paternal interest in him--"

"Rats! I'll give you the answer, Skinner, my boy: He gets results because he does his duty and doesn't sidestep for man or devil. And he's able to do his duty and do it well because he has a clear understanding of what his duty is--and that, Skinner, is the kind of skipper material I've been looking for all my life. As for the boy's horsepower, let me tell you this: If Matt Peasley wasn't any bigger than I am, he'd fight any man that tried to walk over him. It's in his breed. d.a.m.n it, sir, he's a Yankee skipper, and when you've said that you're through. I guess I know. How much have we been paying that bully Kjellin?"

"Two hundred a month."

"Too much! Pay Matt two-twenty-five and attend to the certificate of change of masters."

When Mr. Skinner had departed Cappy sat back in his chair and closed his eyes, as was his habit when his gigantic brain grappled with a problem of more than ordinary dimensions. For fully ten minutes he sat absolutely motionless, then suddenly he straightened up like a jack-in-the-box and summoned Mr. Skinner.

"Skinner," he said plaintively, "I'm feeling a little run down. Will you please be good enough to book Florry and me pa.s.sage to Europe right away. I've never been to Europe, you know, Skinner, and I think it's time I took a vacation."

Mr. Skinner smiled. "Why all the hurry?" he queried.

"I want to try out a theory," Cappy replied. "I have a great curiosity, Skinner, to ascertain if there is any truth in the old saying that absence makes the heart grow fonder. And if it does, Skinner--why, the sooner I start the sooner I can get back."

Mr. Skinner went out mystified. As Mark Twain's friend, Mr. Ballou, remarked about the coffee, Cappy Ricks was a little too "technical" for him.

CHAPTER x.x.xI. INTERNAL COMBUSTION

The Quickstep had arrived in port again before Cappy Ricks and Florry could get away to Europe, so Matt came down by train from Los Medanos and was granted the meager comfort of a farewell with his heart's desire. Thereafter all comfort fled his life, for, with Cappy Ricks away, Mr. Skinner was high and low justice, and he was not long keeping Matt Peasley in ignorance of the fact that it was one thing to skipper a Blue Star s.h.i.+p for Cappy Ricks and quite another thing to skipper the same s.h.i.+p for the Blue Star manager. For Mr. Skinner had never liked Captain Peasley, and, moreover, he never intended to, for the master of the Quickstep was not sufficiently submissive to earn the general manager's approbation as a desirable employee, and Cappy Ricks was the only man with a will and a way of his own who could get along amicably in the same office with the efficient and cold-blooded Mr. Skinner.

Cappy wasn't outside Sandy Hook before Mr. Skinner had Matt on the carpet for daring to bring the Quickstep up river without a pilot. He demanded an explanation.

"I made careful note of all the twists and turns when the pilot took me up the first time," Matt declared. "It isn't a difficult channel, so I decided to save forty-five dollars the next time and take her up myself."

"Suppose you'd buried her nose in the mud and we'd had to lighter her deckload to get her off," Mr. Skinner suggested.

Matt grinned. "If your aunt was a man she'd be your uncle, wouldn't she?" he parried. He had made up his mind not to take Mr. Skinner seriously. Mr. Skinner flushed, looked dangerous, but concluded not to pursue the investigation further.

Three weeks later, when making up to a dock at San Pedro, a strong ebb tide and a mistake in judgment swung the bow of the Quickstep into the end of the dock and a dolphin was torn out. In the fullness of time the Blue Star Navigation Company was in receipt of a bill for $112 dock repairs, whereupon Mr. Skinner wrote Matt, prefacing his letter with the query: "Referring to inclosed bill--how did this happen?" Then he went on to scold Matt bitterly for his inability to handle his s.h.i.+p properly in making up to a dock.

Matt promptly returned Mr. Skinner his own letter, with this penciled memorandum at the bottom of the page: "Referring to inclosed bill for dock repairs--the dock happened to be in my course. That's the only way I can account for it."

For some time, whenever the Quickstep carried s.h.i.+ngle cargoes for the s.h.i.+ngle a.s.sociation, there had been disputes over her freight bill, due to continued discrepancies between the tally in and the tally out, and Mr. Skinner had instructed Matt to tally his next cargo into the s.h.i.+p himself and then tally it out again. Matt engaged a certified lumber surveyor at five dollars a day to do the tallying at the various mills, but at Los Medanos he tallied the cargo out personally. To a s.h.i.+ngle it agreed with the mill tally. Subsequently the manager of the drying yard reported a shortage of eight thousand s.h.i.+ngles, and again Mr. Skinner wrote Matt for an explanation, to which Matt replied as follows:

"Do not pay any attention to the yard manager's tally. Ours is right. A certified tallyman counted 11,487,250 in, and I counted 11,487,250 out, as I have already reported. Sorry I cannot reverse my decision. However, I have an idea which may account for the shortage: After the vessel is reported down river, the stevedores gather on the dock, and while waiting for us to arrive and commence discharging they whittle s.h.i.+ngles to pa.s.s the time away. I give you this information for what it may be worth."

Mr. Skinner had the grace to see that he had been rebuked and left standing in a very poor light for one of his noted efficiency, so he did not pursue the subject further; but the next time Matt came to the office he jumped on him for carrying a dead-head pa.s.senger from San Pedro in the first cabin.

"Of course I carried him," Matt replied. "When I was before the mast in the Annabel Lee he was her skipper, so when I met him in Pedro minus his ticket and stony broke I gave him a lift to San Francisco. Mr. Ricks informed me that I would be permitted these little courtesies within the bounds of reason."

"When Captain Kjellin had the Quickstep," Mr. Skinner answered, "he never carried dead-heads."

"You mean he didn't have the courage to put the name on the pa.s.senger list and write D. H. after it. However, please do not compare me with Captain Kjellin."

"Well, you're not making the time he made in the Quickstep."

"I know it, sir. My policy is to make haste slowly. Kjellin hurried--and see what happened to him. He'll never be fast again, either, with that short leg of his."

"Captain Peasley, I am opposed to your levity."

"Do you want me to worry and stew just because you do not happen to like me and keep picking on me, Mr. Skinner? Why don't you be a sport and give me a fair chance, sir? You have all the best of it in any argument--so why argue?"

"No more dead-heads," Mr. Skinner warned. "Hereafter, pay for your guests."

With the coming on of winter, however, Matt's troubles with Mr. Skinner really commenced, although, in all justice to Skinner, the general manager was merely following out his theory of efficiency, and in respect to the matter upon which he deviled Matt Peasley most he did not differ vastly from many managing owners of steam schooners on the Pacific Coast. The trouble lay in the fact that the Quickstep carried pa.s.sengers. While she was a cargo boat, and hence had no regular run or sailing schedule, her cabin accommodations were really very good and her steward's department excelled that of the regular pa.s.senger boats. By cutting the regular pa.s.senger rates from twenty-five to forty per cent.

and advertising the vessel to sail at a certain hour on a certain date from a certain pier, free-lance ticket brokers found no difficulty in getting her a fair complement of pa.s.sengers each trip. There was a moderate profit in this pa.s.senger traffic, and Mr. Skinner was anxious to increase it.

The difficulty surrounding the pa.s.senger business in the steam-schooner trade, however, lies in the uncertainty of a vessel's arrival and departure. It is all guesswork. Thus Matt Peasley, with his cargo half discharged at San Pedro, would estimate that he would sail from that port, northbound via San Francisco to some Oregon or Was.h.i.+ngton port for another cargo, at noon on the following day. Accordingly, he would wire his owners, who would immediately advertise the sailing of the vessel from San Francisco forty hours later, the Quickstep's average running time between San Pedro and San Francis...o...b..ing about thirty-eight hours.

If the master's estimate proved correct and there were no strong head winds to r.e.t.a.r.d the vessel, she would sail within an hour or two of the advertised time, whereas a delay of six to eight hours in the arrival of the vessel at San Francisco might mean the loss of all the pa.s.senger business garnered for that trip; for compet.i.tion was keen, and the ticket agents, selling on a commission of one dollar per ticket, would switch the traffic to some other vessel sailing earlier rather than have the tickets canceled and thus lose the commission.

When through delay or miscalculation the vessel lost pa.s.senger traffic out of a port other than San Francisco, Mr. Skinner did not feel discouraged. To lose pa.s.sengers out of San Francisco, where the home office of the Blue Star Navigation Company was located, however, savored of a reflection on his efficiency, and caused him much bitter anguish.

Consequently, when Matt Peasley, with a full pa.s.senger list from Eureka to San Francisco, wired Mr. Skinner that he would leave his loading port at two P. M. on Wednesday, Mr. Skinner allowed him twenty-two hours for landing his pa.s.sengers from Eureka to San Francisco and taking on another load for San Pedro, whither the Quickstep was bound on that voyage. As a result the Quickstep was advertised to sail from San Francisco on Thursday at two P. M., and the agents were notified to commence selling tickets. Judge of Mr. Skinner's perturbation, therefore, when he received the following wireless from Matt Peasley at five o'clock on Wednesday:

Bar breaking heavily. At anchor inside. Will cross out as soon as I judge it safe to do so.

Three hours' delay, already, with the prospects exceedingly bright for the Quickstep's lurking inside Humboldt Bar all night! Mr. Skinner saw his pa.s.senger traffic gone to glory for that trip, so he sent a reply to Matt Peasley by wireless, as follows:

You are advertised to sail from here for San Pedro at two o'clock to-morrow. Hope you will permit nothing to militate against the preservation of that schedule. Answer.

"That's what comes of having an inexperienced man in the vessel," he complained to the cas.h.i.+er. "That fellow Peasley sees a few white caps on the bar, and he's afraid to cross out. d.a.m.n! Kjellin had her three years and never hung behind a bar once. Many a time he's come down to Humboldt Bar and found half a dozen steam schooners at anchor inside, waiting for a chance to duck out. Did Kjellin drop anchor too? He did not. Out he went and bucked right through it."

Mr. Skinner waited at the office until six o'clock to get Matt Peasley's answer. He got it--between the eyes:

I have no jurisdiction over Humboldt Bar.

The Quickstep crossed out next morning, and Mr. Skinner wirelessed her master this message:

Your timidity has spoiled San Pedro pa.s.senger business. Drop Eureka pa.s.sengers at Meiggs Wharf and continue your voyage.

Now it does not please any mariner to be told that he is timid, and, while Matt Peasley made no reply, nevertheless, he chalked up a black mark against Mr. Skinner and commenced to plan against the day of reckoning.

That was an unusually severe winter. Four times Matt Peasley came down to the entrance to Humboldt Bar and came to anchor. Three times he tried to cross out and was forced to change his mind; seven times did Mr.

Skinner upbraid him. The eighth time that Matt Peasley's caution knocked the San Francisco pa.s.senger traffic into a deficit, Mr. Skinner sent him this message where the Quickstep lay behind Coos Bay Bar:

What is the matter with you? Your predecessor always managed to negotiate that bar, and this company expects same of you.

"He's bound to run me out of this s.h.i.+p," Matt soliloquized when he read that terse aerogram, "but I promised Cappy I'd stick six months and I'll do it. That penny-pinching Skinner wants me to cut corners and get myself into trouble so he can fire me. I'll not tell him the things I want to tell him, so I guess I won't say anything--much."