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Updated: May 21, 2025
Would you be willing to charter for sixty days, with an option on the vessel for an extension of the charter on the same terms for four years, provided she proves satisfactory for my clients' purposes?" Mr. Hudner started slightly. Four years! It seemed almost too good to be true.
He has to do something to make a showing with the Penelope's owner! I tell you, Matt, I know this man Hudner! He's as thrifty as an Armenian and as slippery as a skating rink. He's laying to stab you, boy. Mind your step!" "Even so, Cappy, she's a bargain. I expect to spend fifty thousand dollars putting her in first-class condition after we get her." "You expect to spend it! Why, how you talk!
And, of course, if we succeed meantime in chartering the Lion at a satisfactory price, we can throw the Unicorn back on Hudner at the end of the sixty days." And Cappy snickered malevolently as he pictured his enemy's discomfiture under these circumstances. Mr. Skinner nodded his comprehension and hastened away to prepare the charter parties.
Cappy's prediction proved to be correct, for the following morning Hayes telephoned that the Mannheim people desired the steamers at Cappy's figures, the charter parties, signed by Cappy, were forwarded to Seattle, and in due course were returned signed by the charterers; whereupon Cappy exercised his option, procured by Matt from Hudner, to charter the Unicorn for four years additional.
"I fought him all over his office," he complained, "but he wouldn't come down a cent. I think we'd better take a chance and give him half a million." "Fiddlesticks! Stay with him, Matt. I know Hudner. He acts like he's full of bellicose veins, but anybody can outgame him.
So, when the inspectors arrive, the Penelope is a well-found ship; as soon as they pass her the skipper returns the equipment, with thanks. As for paint why, the only painting she ever gets is when Hudner lays her alongside some British ship to discharge a foreign cargo of lumber into the lime-juicer; then her mate steals all the paint in the Britisher's lazaret. The poor, unfortunate devil!
She has a dead weight capacity for six thousand tons and was built at Sunderland in 1902. When she went ashore off Point Sur, in 1909, Hudner bought her from the underwriters for five thousand dollars and spent more than half her original cost repairing her. That, of course, made her tantamount to a ship built in the United States, and under American registry she can run between American ports.
"What did Hudner have to say for himself?" Cappy queried when Matt returned from the latter's office, after finally completing the deal. "Not a word! He looked volumes, though, sir." "Serves him right. That man, sir, is a thorn in the side of the market.
Matt nodded, rose and reached for his hat. "I guess you don't want to charter your vessel, sir," he said. "I'm not working for my health, either; so I guess I'll look for some other vessel. I hear the Lion is on the market." And without further ado he walked out. Mr. Hudner let him go; then ran after him and cornered him in the hall.
Any time it's raining duck soup you'll never catch me out with a fork; and, of course, when the boys showed such faith in my ability to trim Hudner I had to make good. "How did you tan his pelt?" Skinner queried. "Easy! While you were away I chartered his steamer Chehalis for a load of redwood lumber from Humboldt Bay to San Francisco at three dollars and a half a thousand feet.
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