ection that had
ever lightened his cold gray eye, and sighing heavily, presently
went on deck. As he passed up the companion-way, the first mate
heard him murmur:

"Gib's a fine lad. I'll be dad burned if he ain't."

CHAPTER XIX

At six o'clock next morning the _Maggie_ was rounding Point Loma,
heading in for San Diego Bay, and Captain Scraggs went below and
awakened Mr. Gibney.

"What's for breakfast, Scraggsy, old kid?" asked Mr. Gibney.

"Fried eggs," said Captain Scraggs, remembering Mr. Gibney's
partiality for that form of nutriment in the vanished days of the
green-pea trade. "Ham an' fried eggs an' a sizzlin' pot o'
coffee. Thought a way out o' our mess, Gib?"

"Not yet," replied Mr. Gibney as he rolled out of bed, "but eggs
is always stimulatin', and I don't give up hope on a full
stomach."

An hour later they were tied up under the coal bunkers, and at
Mr. Gibney's suggestion some twenty tons of sacked coal were
piled on top of the fo'castle head and on the main deck for'd, in
case of emergency. They lay in the harbour all day until about
four o'clock, when Mr. Gibney, by virtue of his authority as
supercargo, ordered the lines cast off and the _Maggie_ steamed
out of the harbour. Off Point Loma they veered to the south,
leaving the Coronado Islands on the starboard quarter, ten miles
to the west. Mr. Gibney was below with Captain Scraggs, battling
with the problem that confronted them, when the mate stuck his
head down the companion-way to report a large power schooner
coming out from the lee of the Coronados and standing off on a
course calculated to intercept the _Maggie_ in an hour or two.

Captain Scraggs and Mr. Gibney sprang up on the bridge at once,
the latter with Scraggs's long glass up to his eye.

"She was hove to under the lee of the island, and the minute we
came out of the harbour and turned south she come nosin' after
us," said the mate.

"Hum!" muttered Mr. Gibney. "Gasoline schooner. Two masts and
baldheaded. About a hundred and twenty ton, I should say, and
showin' a pretty pair of heels. There's somethin' up for'd--yes--let
me see--ye-e-es, there's two more--_holy sailor! it's a gunboat!_
One of those doggoned gasoline coast patrol boats, and there's the
Federal flag flying at the fore."

"Let's put back to San Diego Bay," quavered Captain Scraggs.
"I'll be durned if I relish the idee o' losin' the _Maggie_."

"Too late," said the philosophical Gibney. "We're in Mex