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Neils Halvorsen stood at the gangway enjoying the sunrise over the Punch-bowl, and glancing longingly toward the vivid green of the hills beyond the city, when he was aware of a "put," "put," "put," to starboard of the Alameda. Neils turned at the sound just in time to see a beautiful gasoline schooner of about a hundred and thirty tons heading in toward the bay.
McGuffey lay beside him, and on a thwart in front of him sat good old Neils Halvorsen with Captain Scraggs's head on his knees. As Mr. Gibney looked at this strange tableau Captain Scraggs opened his eyes, glanced up at Neils Halvorsen, and spoke: "Why if it ain't old squarehead Neils," he muttered wonderingly. "If it ain't Neils, I'll go to hades or some other seaport."
It would take nearer fifteen days for the run from Honolulu to that desert island, and Neils Halvorsen wondered whether the marooned men would still be alive by the time aid could reach them. For by some sixth sailor sense Neils Halvorsen became convinced that his old friends of the vegetable trade were marooned.
Therefore, both men aired with the utmost frankness their opinion of their employer; even Neils Halvorsen was peeved. Their depression and rage was nothing, however, compared with that of Captain Scraggs's. He had recklessly jettisoned approximately two hundred dollars' worth of vegetables; indeed the loss might go higher, for all he knew.
These two worthies might be anywhere, and every conceivable thing under the sun might have happened to them; hence, in his idle moments, Neils Halvorsen did not disturb his gray matter speculating on their whereabouts and their then condition of servitude.
So he was called Scraps, and, since he was nobody's dog, was everybody's dog so much so, that Mr. Jackson promised to knock Ah Moy's block off if he did not feed the puppy well, while Sigurd Halvorsen, in the forecastle, did his best to knock off Henrik Gjertsen's block when the latter was guilty of kicking Scraps out of his way. Yea, even more.
The Maggie II swung around and with a long streak of opalescent foam trailing behind her swung down the bay and faded at last in the ghostly moonlight beyond Diamond Head; after which Neils Halvorsen, with murder in his eye and a tarred rope's end in his horny fist, went down into the cabin and talked to the man who posed as Captain Scraggs. In the end he got a confession.
Mary G. Ward, in charge. Mrs. Young edited the Headquarters Message and Mrs. Myrtle W. Marble of Humboldt attended to the publishing and mailing. Mrs. Lulu S. Halvorsen of Nebraska City was press chairman. Miss Laughlin spent a month speaking and organizing. The State convention was held at Geneva November 21-December 1, Mrs. Ellis Meredith of Denver a principal evening speaker.
Gibney invested in a ten-cent Sailor's Delight and strolled down to the Maggie. Neils Halvorsen, the lone deckhand, was aboard, and the moment Mr. Gibney trod the Maggie's deck once more as mate, he exercised his prerogative to order Neils ashore for the remainder of the day. Since Halvorsen was not in on the ginseng deal, Mr.
McGuffey, after two barren months "on the beach," landed a job as second assistant on a Standard Oil tanker running to the West Coast, while thrifty Neils Halvorsen invested the savings of ten years in a bay scow known as the Willie and Annie, arrogated to himself the title of captain, and proceeded to freight hay, grain, and paving stones from Petaluma.
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