from the fact that any
man discharged from a Blue Star ship stood as much chance of obtaining a
berth with one of Cappy Ricks' competitors as a celluloid dog chasing an
asbestos cat through Hades.

The reader will readily appreciate, therefore, the apprehensions which
assailed Cappy Ricks when the Blue Star Navigation Company discovered it
had on its payroll one Matthew Peasley, a Nobody from Nowhere, who not
only had the insufferable impudence to apply for a job skippering the
finest windjammer in the fleet, but when rebuffed in no uncertain terms,
refused to withdraw his application, and defied his owners to fire him.
Such a preposterous state of affairs borders so closely on the realm of
fancy as to require explanation; hence, for the nonce let us leave Cappy
Ricks and Mr. Skinner to their sordid task of squeezing dividends out
of the Blue Star Navigation Company and turn the searchlight of inquiry
upon the amazing Matthew.

CHAPTER II. THE MAN FROM BLUE WATER

If, instead of advancing the theory that man sprang from a monkey,
Darwin had elected to nominate the duck for that dubious honor, there
is no doubt but that he would have pointed to the Peasley family,
of Thomaston, Maine, as evidence of the correctness of his theory of
evolution. The most casual student of natural history knows that the
instant a duckling chips its shell it toddles straightway to the nearest
water. The instant a male Peasley could cut his mother's apron strings,
he, also, made for the nearest water, for the Peasleys had always been
sailors, a statement which a perusal of the tombstones in Thomaston
cemetery will amply justify. Indeed, a Peasley who had not acquired
his master's ticket prior to his twenty-fifth birthday was one of two
things--a disgrace to the family or a corpse. Consequently, since the
traditions of his tribe were very strong in Matthew Peasley VI, it
occasioned no comment in Thomaston when, having acquired a grammar
school education, he answered the call of his destiny and fared forth to
blue water and his first taste of dog's body and salt horse.

When he was fourteen years old and very large for his age, Matt
commenced his apprenticeship in a codfisher on the Grand Banks, which,
when all is said and done, constitutes the finest training school in the
world for sailors. By the time he was seventeen he had made one voyage
to Rio de Janeiro in a big square-rigger out of Portland; and so smart
and capable an A.B. w