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The skiff floated off the ship at the end of the painter, so The Squarehead hauled it in, climbed down into the skiff, and made the light rope fast to a thwart; then, with Captain Scraggs paying out the hawser, Neils bent manfully to the oars and started to tow the steel cable back to the Maggie.

Gibney, drawing The Squarehead and McGuffey to him, favoured each with a searching glance and said: "Gentlemen, did it ever occur to you that there's money in the chicken business?" It had! Both McGuffey and Neils admitted it.

Neils searched through the cabin until he came across the book that is the bible of every South Sea trading vessel the British Admiralty Reports.

Gibney and Bartholomew McGuffey he knew had turned their sun-tanned faces toward deep water some years before Captain Scraggs and the Maggie disappeared from the environs of San Francisco Bay, and Neils Halvorsen was wise enough to waste no time wondering what had become of them.

More he could not be certain of until he had paved the way for a complete investigation, and as a preliminary step toward that end he clinched his fist and sprang swiftly toward the bogus skipper. "Aye tank you bane damn liar," he muttered, and struck home, straight and true, to the point of the jaw. The man went down, and in an instant Neils was on top of him.

We'll reorganize the syndicate, an' the minute me an' Neils finds ourselves with a bill o' sale for a one quarter interest in the Victor, based on the actual cost price, we'll tow this here barge " "An' split the profits on the codfish?" Scraggs queried eagerly. "Certainly not. Me an' Neils splits that fifty-fifty.

Of all the little ship's company, Neils Halvorsen, colloquially designated as "The Squarehead," was the only individual who was, in truth and in fact, his own man. Neils was steady, industrious, faithful, capable, and reliable; any one of a hundred deckhand jobs were ever open to Neils, yet, for some reason best known to himself, he preferred to stick by the Maggie.

"As a member o' the Maggie Syndicate an' ownin' an' votin' a quarter interest," boomed the engineer, "I hereby call a meetin' o' the said syndicate for the purpose o' transactin' any an' all business that may properly come before the meetin'." "Pass the word for Neils Halvorsen," suggested Mr. Gibney. "Bless his squarehead soul," he added.

Gibney dreamed that a white man sat in the stern sheets of this whaleboat, and as the boat touched the beach it seemed to Mr. Gibney that this man sprang ashore and ran swiftly toward him. And Mr. Gibney twisted his suffering lips into a wry smile as he realized the oddities of this mirage it seemed to him that this visionary white man bore a striking resemblance to Neils Halvorsen.

For nearly half a minute Neils Halvorsen stared open-mouthed at the spurious Captain Scraggs, while slowly there sifted through his brain the notion that he had happened across the track of a deep and bloody mystery of the seas. There was "something rotten in Denmark." Of that Neils Halvorsen was certain.