n sight
waitin' to be picked up?"

"Hear that, Gib? Hear that, you swab?"

"I heard it. Did you hear that?"

"What?"

"A nice, brisk little nor'west trade wind that's only blowin'
about thirty mile an hour. The _Maggie_ ain't got power enough to
tow the bark agin that wind. You'll haul her ahead two feet an',
in spite o' you, she'll slip back twenty-five inches."

"That trade wind dies down after sunset," the devilish new mate
informed him.

"Quite true. But in the meantime you're burning coal loafin'
around here, an' before you get the bark inside you'll be plumb
out o' coal," Mr. McGuffey reminded them. "I know this old coffin
like I know the back o' my own hand. Why, she lives on coal!
Oh-h-h, Scraggsy, Scraggsy, poor old Scraggsy," he keened in a
high falsetto voice and subsided on a crate of celery, the while
he waved his legs in the air and affected to be overcome by his
merriment. Scraggs turned the colour of a ripe old Edam cheese,
while Mr. Gibney folded his hands and looked idiotic.

"Old Phineas P. Scraggs, the salvage expert!" McGuffey's falsetto
would have maddened a sheep. "He cast his bread upon the waters
and lo, it returned to him after many days--and made him sick.
O-h-h-h-h, Scraggsy--poor old Scraggsy! If he went divin' for
pearls in three feet o' water he'd bring up a clam shell. Oh,
dear, I'm goin' to die o' this, Gib."

"Don't, Bart. I'm goin' to have need o' your well-known ability
to help salvage this bark. Scraggs, you old sinner, has it dawned
on you that what this proposition needs to get it over is a dash
o' the Adelbert P. Gibney brand of imagination?"

The new navigating officer drew Captain Scraggs aside and
whispered in his ear: "Make it up with these Smart Alecks,
Scraggs. They got it on us, but if we can send you an' Halvorsen,
McGuffey and Gibney over to the bark, you can get some sail on
her an' what with the wind helpin' us along, the _Maggie_ can tow
her all right."

Mr. Gibney saw by the hopeful, even cunning, look that leaped to
Scraggs's eyes that the problem was about to be solved without
recourse to the Gibney imagination, so he resolved to be alert
and not permit himself to be caught out on the end of a limb.
"Well, Scraggsy?" he demanded.

"I guess I need you in my business, Gib. You're right an' I'm
always wrong. It's a fact. I _ain't_ got no more imagination than
a chicken. Hence, havin' no imagination o' my own I ask you, as
man to man an' appealin' to y