sail in the
same ship with a quitter; so you might as well go now, when we can part
good friends." He turned to Mr. Murphy. "How about you, Mike? Are you
going to run out on me, too?"

Now, as between the Irish and the Scotch, history records no
preponderance of courage in either, for both are Gaels and a comparison
is difficult.

However, Scotchmen are a conservative race and will walk round a fight
rather than be forced into it, while all that is necessary to make an
Irishman fight is to impugn his courage.

Mr. Murphy had seen the fight ahead of the Retriever and he did not
blame Mr. MacLean for side-stepping it. Indeed, he had intended pursuing
the same course; but Matt Peasley, by his latest remark, had rendered
that impossible. To desert now would savor of dishonor; and, moreover,
Matt Peasley, though master, had called him by his Christian name. Mr.
Murphy touched his forelock respectfully.

"I am not Scotch," he announced, with a slight emphasis on the pronoun.
"Shame on you, Angus MacLean--ditching the skipper like that!"

"Sticks an' stones may break ma bones, but names'll never hur-rt
me," Mr. MacLean retorted. "I tell ye I dinna care for creosote in ma
porridge." And he followed Matt Peasley aft, where the latter paid him
off and gave him five minutes to pack and get off the ship. Immediately
after supper the cook followed the second mate; but, since the former
was a Jap and probably the worst marine cook in the world, his departure
occasioned no heartache.

"We'll board at the mill cook-house until we're loaded, Mike," Matt
Peasley informed the mate. "They have a good Chink up there."

Mr. Murphy sighed as he loaded his pipe and struck a match for it.

"It does look to me, sir," he replied, with that touch of conscious
superiority so noticeable in the Celt, "as though Cappy Ricks might have
slipped this cargo to a Dutchman."

The Retriever commenced taking on cargo at seven o'clock the following
morning, with Mr. Murphy on shipboard and Matt Peasley on the dock
superintending the gang of stevedores. Ordinarily the masters of lumber
freighters ship their crews before commencing to load, in order that
sailors at forty dollars a month may obviate the employment of an equal
number of stevedores at forty cents an hour; but Mr. Murphy, out of his
profound experience, advised against this course, as tending to spread
the news of the Retriever's misfortune and militate against securing a
crew when the ve