fore. Then we'll rig a foretopmast
and a spinnaker boom on her, and bend a fisherman's staysail.
Nothing like it when you're sailing a little off the wind. Scraggs,
you have the papers of the old _Maggie_, and we all have our
licenses regular enough. Dig up the old papers, Scraggsy, and I'll
doctor 'em up to fit the _Maggie II_. As for our armament, we'll
dismount the guns and stow 'em away in the hold until we get down on
the Colombian coast, and while we're lying in Panama repairing the
holes where my shots went through her, and puttin' new planks in her
decks where the old plankin' has been scored by shrapnel, those
paraqueets will think we're as peaceful as chipmunks. Better look
over your supplies, McGuffey, and see if there's any paint aboard.
I'd just as lief give the old girl a different dress before we drop
anchor in Panama."

"Gib," said Captain Scraggs earnestly, "I'll keel-haul and
skull-drag the man that says you ain't got a great head."

"By the lord," supplemented McGuffey, "you have."

The commodore smiled and tapped his frontal bone with his
forefinger. "Imagination, my lads, imagination," he said, and
reached for the last of the punch.

Exactly three weeks from the date of the naval battle which took
place off the Coronado Islands, and whereby Mr. Gibney became
commodore and managing owner of the erstwhile Mexican coast
patrol schooner _Reina Maria_, that vessel sailed out of the
harbour of Panama completely rejuvenated. Not a scar on her
shapely lines gave evidence of the sanguinary engagement through
which she had passed.

Mr. Gibney had her painted a creamy white with a dark blue
waterline. She had had her bottom cleaned and scraped and the
copper sheathing overhauled and patched up. Her sails had been
overhauled, inspected, and repaired wherever necessary, and in
order to be on the safe side, Mr. Gibney, upon motion duly made
by him and seconded by McGuffey (to whom the seconding of the
Gibney motions had developed into a habit), purchased an extra
suit of new sails. The engines were overhauled by the faithful
McGuffey and a large store of distillate stored in the hold.
Captain Scraggs, with his old-time aversion to expense, made a
motion (which was seconded by McGuffey before he had taken time
to consider its import) providing for the abolition of the office
of chief engineer while the _Maggie II_ was under sail, at which
time the chief ex-officio was to hold himself under the orders of
t