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Captain Grant had left the ship and Sparks didn't know what hotel in San Diego the late master of the Tillicum would put up for the night; so I read the message to see whether it was important, for I felt that it had to do with the ship's business and that I was justified in reading it." Again Cappy Ricks squirmed. Mr. Skinner commenced to gnaw his thumb nail.
Ricks went on into town to arrange matters, while Sandy stopped in a grocery to buy their supper. His interest in the show had been of short duration. He felt listless and tired, something seemed to be buzzing continually in his head, and he shivered in his damp clothes. In the grocery he sat on a barrel and leaned his head against the wall.
Skinner received this information in silence. He was not related to Cappy Ricks. But Matt Peasley sat down, crossed his legs and matched glares with his mercurial father-in-law. "You have troubles!" he jeered, with emphasis on the pronoun. "Have you got a misery in your back, or is Herbert Hoover the wrong man for Secretary of Commerce?" "Stow your sarcasm, young feller," Cappy shrilled.
I'm a director and vice president of this infernal bank and I don't know I'm alive! Man, man, I want it a thing a what-you-may-call-'em a Oh, the devil! Why do I deposit in this dratted bank? Eureka! I have it! I want a notice." "You mean an advice, Mr. Ricks." "Bully boy! An advice. That's it. Holy mackerel, how I love a man that's fast on his feet!
"Attached your bank account, Matt? I give you my word of honor I had nothing to do with it." "Well, it's tied up by the Blue Star Navigation Company, and Cappy Ricks has served notice on me to call here and pay up or suffer cancellation of my charter. Of course, for all the good my bank account is to me this minute he might as well ask me to give him the moon." "I'm truly sorry," said Skinner.
The pilots wouldn't board me, and by sailing her in myself I saved pilotage and salvage claims. I lost the lower topsail and the consignees are going to find a shortage in those hardwood logs; but that's all except that I haven't had a decent meal in God knows when. Say, Cappy, what does he look like? A Peasley or a Ricks?" "Both," Cappy chirped diplomatically.
In spring most of the ricks are gone, threshed and sold, but there remains the vast pile of straw always straw and the three-cornered stump of a hay-rick which displays bands of different hues, one above the other, like the strata of a geological map. Some of the hay was put up damp, some in good condition, and some had been browned by bad weather before being carted.
Upon arrival in New York with his cargo of nitrate, his anxiety to make a record in his first command in steam caused him to stay on the job every moment the Narcissus was discharging, for Cappy Ricks had impressed upon him, as he impressed upon every skipper in the Blue Star employ, the fact that a slow boat is slow paying dividends.
And Matt took the hint, with the result that some six weeks later Cappy Ricks, accompanied by his faithful port captain and his equally faithful port engineer, cleared for Galveston aboard the Sunset Limited. And at Galveston began the only real vacation Cappy Ricks had ever had.
But nothing was visible there save the ricks, and the humpbacked barn cushioned with moss, and the granary rising against the church-tower behind, where the smacking of the rope against the flag-staff still went on. Now Henchard had not the slightest suspicion that Elizabeth-Jane's movement was to be so prompt.
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