Chapter L

Mr. Hankins withdrew, greatly crestfallen, and the despot of the Blue Star office turned to his trusted lieutenants.

"Well," he declared, "one after the other you have to come to the old man to be shown. I guess I've proved to you two boys this morning that I'm to be trusted with buying a few ships and letting contracts for a few more, haven't I?"

"I don't like the idea of Cappy Ricks on a steamer that's likely to be torpedoed. I don't want you to go to Europe alone--"

"I'm not going alone. Captain Mike Murphy, our new port captain, is going with me. I wouldn't think of buying a steamer unless that splendid fellow O.K.'d the hull. And Terry Reardon, our new port engineer, will accompany me also. Terry has to O.K. the engines. Between the three of us, it's going to take a smart trader to sell us any junk, I'm telling you!"

"I ought to go with you," Matt suggested.

"You have your work at home, attending to the fleet. It isn't much of a fleet, I'll admit; but such as it is it requires some attention. I'll be the chief scout of this organization and see whether I can't rustle up some major-league vessels from some of those bush-league European owners."

"I've had a fine time getting good men to take their places in the Narcissus since you promoted Mike and Terry in my absence!" Matt complained. "Mike and Terry know her well--and she's such a big brute to handle."

"Where is the Narcissus, by the way?"

"Loading nitrate at Tocopilla and Antofagasta, Chile. This is her last voyage under the old charter."

"Got any new business in sight for her?"

"I won't have the slightest difficulty getting another nitrate charter and at a rate double what she's been getting."

"Every vessel taken off the nitrate run stiffens the freight rate in these days, when they have to have so much nitrate in the manufacture of war munitions," the astute Cappy declared. "If I were you, Matt, I'd find her a good outside cargo or two, and then slip her back in the nitrate business again. Freights may have advanced in the interim."

"I have a mighty profitable cargo offered me this morning, Cappy. An agent of the British Government called on me and offered a whopping price for carrying a cargo of mules and horses from Galveston to Havre. I think I shall turn the proposition down. It's too dangerous, Cappy."

"You mean we might have our ship blown up by a German submarine?"

Matt nodded.

"Well, we'd collect our freight in advance, wouldn't we? And the British Government will guarantee to reimburse us if the ship is lost, will it not? Well, then, where's the risk?"

"There's the danger to the crew."

"Any man that goes to sea