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Updated: June 18, 2025
"Chuck me down a nut, Gib," said Captain Scraggs. "I'm famished." In conformity with the commodore's plans, the castaways made camp in the grove. For a week they subsisted on gooneys, taro root, cocoanuts and cocoanut milk, and a sea-turtle which Scraggs found wandering on the beach. This suggested turtle eggs to Mr. Gibney, and a change of diet resulted.
I got to make good on my bluff, and what's in it for me? Nothin' but glory. Can you hock a chunk of glory for ham and eggs, Phineas Scraggs? Not on your life. If it hadn't been for you buttin' in with your blasted, rotten hulk of a fresh-water skiff, I'd " Mr. Gibney paused ominously and savagely bit the end of his cigar.
As Captain Scraggs and his Chinese companion approached the wharf the skipper glanced warily about. He had small fear that either Gibney or McGuffey would show up for an hour, for he knew that Mr. Gibney had money in his possession. However, he decided to take no chances, and scouted the vicinity thoroughly before venturing aboard the Maggie.
The syndicate was sick, weak, and emaciated almost beyond recognition, and on the twenty-fifth day Captain Scraggs fainted twice. On the twenty-sixth day McGuffey crawled into the shadow of a stunted mimosa bush and started to pray! To Mr. Gibney this was an infallible sign that McGuffey was now delirious.
Gib, if that's business, all I got to say is: 'Excuse me'." Mr. Gibney seized the defunct fish from the diver's hand, tore it in half, slapped Captain Scraggs with one awful fragment and hurled the other at McGuffey. "I'm outer the syndicate," he raved, beside himself with anger.
Gibney was "flush," he decided to accompany the mate and preserve him from temptation. There was safety in numbers, he reasoned. Captain Scraggs said he thought he'd go back to the Maggie. He had forgotten to lock the cabin door. Had either Mr. Gibney or McGuffey been watching Captain Scraggs for the next twenty minutes they would have been much puzzled to account for that worthy's actions.
"Now, ain't that a raw deal?" Scraggs complained. "That junk thief gets hauled off first." "The first shall be last an' the last shall be first," Gibney quoted piously. "Don't be a crab, Scraggs. Pray that the fog don't lift." Out of the fog there rose a great hubbub of engine room gongs, the banging of the Bodega's Lyle gun, and much profanity.
"Well, Scraggsy, old hunks, this is pleasant, ain't it?" said Mr. Gibney, and spat on the deck of the Maggie II. "Right-o," replied Captain Scraggs cheerily, "though when I was a young feller and first went to sea, it wasn't considered no pleasantry to spit on a nice clean deck. You might cut that out, Gib. It's vulgar."
At the Marigold Café next morning he was almost touched to observe that both Gibney and McGuffey showed up arrayed in dungarees, wherefore Scraggs knew his late enemies purposed proceeding to the Maggie immediately after breakfast and working in the engine room all day Sunday.
They shook, and as Captain Gibney's eye wandered aloft, First Mate Scraggs and Chief Engineer McGuffey looked up also. From the main topmast of the Maggie II floated a long blue burgee, with white lettering on it, and as it whipped out into the breeze the old familiar name stood out against the noonday sun. "Good old dishcloth!" murmured Mr. Gibney. "She never comes down."
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