Chapter XXVII - Page 2

the lookout's telescope; and there's only one man on deck--"

Mr. Skinner turned to Cappy Ricks, put his arms round him and jerked the old man from one end of the office to the other.

"He's safe, he's safe, he's safe, he's safe!" he howled indecorously. "Matt's sailing her in. He's sailing her in--"

"You scoundrel!" Cappy shrilled. "Be quiet! Is she sailing in or towing--"

"She's sailing in."

Cappy Ricks slumped down in his chair, his arms hanging weakly at his sides.

"Yes, Skinner," he barely whispered, "Matt's alive, after all. Nobody else would have the consummate crust to sail her in but him. Any other skipper under heaven would have hove to off the lightship and sent in word by the pilot boat to send out a tug. Oh, Lord, I thank Thee! I'm a wicked, foolish, bone-headed old man; but Lord, I do thank Thee--I do, indeed!"

Half an hour later Cappy Ricks and Mr. Skinner, in a fast motorboat, came flying up the bay and caught sight of the Retriever loafing lazily past Fort Mason. On she came, with a tiny bone in her teeth; and suddenly, as Cappy peered ahead through the spray that flew in over the bows of the launch and drenched him to the skin, the Retriever's mainsail was lowered rapidly. The vessel was falling off by the time the mainsail was down and Cappy and Mr. Skinner saw Matt run aft, steady the wheel and bring the vessel up on the wind again. She was now under spanker and the headsails. Matt lashed the wheel and again ran forward, pausing at the main-topmast-staysail halyards to cast them off and permit the sail to come down by the run.

On to the topgallant forecastle Matt Peasley leaped, praising his Maker for patent anchors on the Retriever. With a hammer he knocked out the stopper; the starboard anchor dropped and the red rust flew from her hawsepipe as the anchor chain screamed through it. With his hand on the compressor of the windlass, Matt Peasley snubbed her gently to the forty-five fathom shackle, cast off his jib halyards to let the jib slide down the stay by its own weight, raced aft, and gently lowered the spanker as the American barkentine Retriever, with the yellow flag flying at the fore, swung gently to anchor on the quarantine grounds, two hundred and twenty-one days from Manila.

Cappy Ricks turned to his general manager.

"Pretty work, Skinner!" he said huskily. "I guess there's nothing wrong with that boy's health. Damn! The quarantine boat will beat us to it! Matt's throwing the Jacob's ladder over the side for them."

"We can't board her until she passes quarantine--" Mr. Skinner began; but Cappy silenced him with a terrible look.

"The word can't, Skinner, was eliminated from my vocabulary some fifty years ago. We can--and I will! You needn't; but I've simply got to! Hey,