San Francisco, July 5, 19--.

Captain Matthew Peasley,
Master Barkentine Retriever,
Hoquiam, Washington.

Glad you have legal right to be called captain. Sorry I have
not. Proceed to Weatherby's mill, at Cosmopolis, and load for
Antofagasta, Chile. Remember speed synonymous with dividends
in shipping business.

Blue Star Navigation Company.

When Cappy signed his telegrams with the company name it was always a
sure indication he had discharged his cargo of sentiment and gotten down
to business once more.

"A little creosoted piling now and then is bully for the best of men,"
he cackled. "For a month of Sundays that man Peasley will curse me as
far as he can smell the Retriever. Oh, well! Every dog must have his
day--and I'm a wise old dog. I'll teach that Matt boy some respect for
his owners before I'm through with him!"

CHAPTER XII. THE CAMPAIGN OPENS

When Matt Peasley's Yankee combativeness, coupled with the accident of
birth in the old home town of Cappy Ricks, gained for him command of
the Blue Star Navigation Company's big barkentine, Retriever, he lacked
eight days of his twenty-first birthday. He had slightly less beard than
the average youth of his years; and, despite the fact that he had been
exposed almost constantly to salty gales since his fourteenth birthday,
he did not look his age. And of all the ridiculous sights ashore or
afloat the most ridiculous is a sea captain with the body of a Hercules
and the immature features of an eighteen-year-old boy.

Indeed, such a great, soft, innocent baby type was Matt Peasley that
even the limited sense of humor possessed by his motley crew forbade
their reference to him, after custom immemorial, as the Old Man. The
formal title of captain seemed equally absurd; so they compromised by
dubbing him Mother's Darling.

"If," quoth Mr. Michael Murphy, chief kicker of the Retriever, over a
quiet pipe with Mr. Angus MacLean, the second mate, as the vessel lay at
anchor in Grays Harbor, "Cappy Ricks had laid eyes on Mother's Darling
before ordering him to Seattle to go up for his master's ticket, the old
fox would have scuttled the ship sooner than trust that baby with her."

"Ye'll nae be denying the lad kens his business," Mr. MacLean declared.

"Aye! True enough, Mac; but 'twould be hard to convince Cappy Ricks o'
that. Every skipper in his employ is a graybeard."

"Mayhap,"