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Much blood of John Barleycorn was spilt in that campaign; and there is many a farmer yet hearty who recollects the ale-barrels being rolled up into the rickyards and there broached in cans and buckets, that the rebels, propitiated with plentiful liquor, might forbear to set fire to the ricks or sack the homestead.
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?
The farmers' powerful horses find it heavy going across the fresh ploughed furrows and the wet 'squishey' meadows, where the double mounds cannot be shirked. Now a lull, and the two old hands, a little at fault, make for the rising ground, where are some ricks, and a threshing machine at work, thinking from thence to see over the tall hedgerows.
Do you know what it cost me to make her engines over again? Thirteen thousand dollars, young man and, at that, they're nothing to brag of now." "Quite right; but that's because you didn't employ a German engineer and tell him you were going to put the Amelia Ricks on Duxbury Reef. Are you familiar with the characteristics of German engineers, Cappy?" Cappy threw up both hands. "I'm neutral, Gus.
Howard pushed on, walking lightly and rapidly, and found himself at last at Barton, one of those entirely delightful pastoral villages that push up so close to Cambridge on every side; a vague collection of quaint irregular cottages, whitewashed and thatched, with bits of green common interspersed, an old manorial farm with its byres and ricks, surrounded by a moat fringed with little pollarded elms.
Any young upstart can run coastwise, put in his service sailing a ship from headland to headland, and then take a course in a navigation school, where in six weeks he can cram sufficient navigation into his thick head to pass the inspectors and get a master's ticket; but for offshore cruising Cappy Ricks demanded a real sailor and a thorough business man rolled into one.
Privately they considered Cappy Ricks an accessory before the fact, inasmuch as Cappy hung up at least five hundred dollars in small prizes for the vaqueros. Whenever they had a "bad one" they could always induce Cappy to offer ten dollars for staying two minutes and five dollars a minute for each minute over the limit which seldom reached two minutes.
"It's going to clean me of my last dollar to make good with you on my charter, even if Morrow & Company do not make good with me on theirs; and " Cappy Ricks held up his hand. "My dear boy," he said with maddening calm, "listen to me! I had a hunch this would happen.
We all saw it was a put-up job; he was Ricks Wilson's old pal, you know." "But Sandy Kilday wouldn't lie!" cried Ruth. "Well, that's what he did, and worse. When we tried to close in on Wilson, Kilday fought like a tiger. You never saw anything like the mix-up, and in the general skirmish Wilson escaped." "And and Sandy?" Ruth was leaning forward, with her hands clasped and her lips apart.
The Tillicum was seventy-six hours at sea! "Matthew," Matt Peasley murmured to himself, "'theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die' and all in one thundering big hurry!" Cappy Ricks was having his siesta, with his feet on top of his desk, when Matt Peasley came bounding in, seized him by the shoulder and shook him wideawake.
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