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Updated: June 23, 2025
At the same time, Scraggs and Neils Halvorsen came crawling aft over the deckload and when they reached the clear space around the pilot house, Captain Scraggs threw his brown derby on the deck and leaped upon it until, his rage abating ultimately, no power on earth, in the air, or under the sea, could possibly have rehabilitated it and rendered it fit for further wear, even by Captain Scraggs.
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.
The commodore shook hands cordially and departed, followed by the faithful Neils Halvorsen. The moment the door closed behind them Scraggs turned to the engineer. "Mac," he said earnestly, "Gib's up to somethin'. He's got that imagination o' his workin'. I can tell it every time; he gets a foggy look in his eyes. We made a mistake kiddin' him to-day.
It was just a squib in the shipping news, but Neils Halvorsen read it with amazement and joy: The power schooner Maggie II arrived this morning, ten days from the Friendly Islands. The little schooner came into port with her hold bursting with the most valuable cargo that has entered Honolulu in many years. It consists for the most part of black coral.
A hasty round of the schooner convinced him that she had at least a month's supply of food and water. Only one thought surged through his mind, and that was the awful necessity for haste. The anchor came in with a rush, the Kanaka boys chanting a song that sounded to Neils like a funeral dirge, and Neils went below and turned the gasoline engines wide open.
"You say that so nice, Scraggsy, old hopeful, I'm tempted to think you can whistle it. Neils, he's only askin' you to risk your life overboard for nothing. 'Tain't in the shippin' articles that a seaman's got to do that. If he wants a swimmin' exhibition make him pay for it through the nose.
The commodore shuddered. He was filled with vague misgivings, but Neils Halvorsen grinned cheerfully. McGuffey got out a cologne-scented handkerchief and clamped it across his nose. "Well, if that's Gib's fortune, it must be filthy lucre," he mumbled through the handkerchief. "Gib, what have you hooked on to? A public dump?" Mr. Gibney's eyes flashed, but he made no reply.
Diabolical cunning, shrewd malevolence pure and simple, armed with myriads of stings for hypodermic incisions that poison a man's blood, should be appropriately costumed in a moss-green velvet robe, should wear frizzled bangs as yellow as yonder bouquet of Marechal Neils, so suggestive of the warning flag flying over pest-houses!"
The finest of linen, and china, and glass, and silver adorned his table, with bits of fanciful crockery gathered here and there in his extended wanderings, and always flowers for a centre-piece roses mostly, if he could get them tea roses and Marshal Neils, for Gretchen, he said, was fond of these, and, as she might surprise him at any moment, he wished to be ready for her, and show that he was expecting her.
"One hundred an' fifty per cent. efficient," McGuffey declared. Neils Halvorsen said nothing, but grinned like the head of an old fiddle. Mr. Gibney appeared to swell visibly, after the manner of a turkey gobbler. "Thanks, Scraggsy an' you, too, Bart.
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