Before proceeding further with this narrative, due respect for
the reader's curiosity directs that we diverge for a period
sufficient to present a brief history of the steamer _Maggie_ and
her peculiar crew. We will begin with the _Maggie_.
She had been built on Puget Sound back in the eighties, and was
one hundred and six feet over all, twenty-six feet beam and seven
feet draft. Driven by a little steeple compound engine, in the
pride of her youth she could make ten knots. However, what with
old age and boiler scale, the best she could do now was six, and
had Mr. McGuffey paid the slightest heed to the limitations
imposed upon his steam gauge by the Supervising Inspector of
Boilers at San Francisco, she would have been limited to five.
Each annual inspection threatened to be her last, and Captain
Scraggs, her sole owner, lived in perpetual fear that eventually
the day must arrive when, to save the lives of himself and his
crew, he would be forced to ship a new boiler and renew the
rotten timbers around her deadwood. She had come into Captain
Scraggs's possession at public auction conducted by the United
States Marshal, following her capture as she sneaked into San
Francisco Bay one dark night with a load of Chinamen and opium
from Ensenada. She had cost him fifteen hundred hard-earned
dollars.
Scraggs--Phineas P. Scraggs, to employ his full name, was
precisely the kind of man one might expect to own and operate the
_Maggie_. Rat-faced, snaggle toothed and furtive, with a low
cunning that sometimes passed for great intelligence, Scraggs'
character is best described in a homely American word. He was
"ornery." A native of San Francisco, he had grown up around the
docks and had developed from messboy on a river steamer to master
of bay and river steamboats, although it is not of record that he
ever commanded such a craft. Despite his "ticket" there was none
so foolish as to trust him with one--a condition of affairs which
had tended to sour a disposition not naturally sweet. The
yearning to command a steamboat gradually had developed into an
obsession. Result--the "fast and commodious S.S. _Maggie_," as
the United States Marshal had had the audacity to advertise her.
In the beginning, Captain Scraggs had planned to do bay and river
towing with the _Maggie_. Alas! The first time the unfortunate
Scraggs attempted to tow a heavily laden barge up river, a light
fog had come down, necessitating the frequent blowing of the
whistle. Following the sixth long blast, Mr. McGuffey had
whistled Scraggs on the engine room howler; swearing horribly, he
had demanded to be informed why in this and that the skipper
didn't leave that dod-gasted whistle alone. It was using up his
steam faster than he could manufacture it. Thereafter, Scraggs
had used a patent foghorn, and when the honest McGuffey had once
more succeeded in conserving sufficient steam to crawl up river,
the tide had turned and the _Maggie_ could not buck the ebb.
McGuffey declared a few new tubes in the boiler would do the
trick, but on the other hand, Mr. Gibney pointed out that the old
craft was practically punk aft and a stiff tow would jerk the
tail off the old girl. In despair, therefore, Captain Scraggs had
abandoned bay and river towing and was prepared to jump overboard
and end all, when an opportunity offered for the freighting of
garden truck and dairy produce from Halfmoon Bay to San
Francisco.
But now a difficulty arose. The new run was an "outside"
one--salt water all the way. Under the ruling of the Inspectors,
the _Maggie_ would be running coastwise the instant she engaged
in the green pea and string bean trade, and Captain Scraggs's
license provided for no such contingency. His ticket entitled him
to act as master on the waters of San Francisco Bay and the
waters tributary thereto, and although Scraggs argued that the
Pacific Ocean constituted waters "tributary thereto," if _he_
understood the English language, the Inspectors were obdurate.
What if the distance was less than twenty-five miles? they
pointed out. The voyage was undeniably coastwise and carried with
it all the risk of wind and wave. And in order to impress upon
Captain Scraggs the weight of their authority, the Inspectors
suspended for six months Captain Scraggs's bay and river license
for having dared to negotiate two coastwise voyages without
consulting them. Furthermore, they warned him that the next time
he did it they would condemn the fast and commodious _Maggie_.
In his extremity, Fate had sent to Captain Scraggs a large,
imposing, capable, but socially indifferent person who responded
to the name of Adelbert P. Gibney. Mr. Gibney had spent part of
an adventurous life in the United States Navy, where he had
applied himself and acquired a fair smattering of navigation.
Prior to entering the Navy he had been a foremast hand in clipper
ships and had held a second mate's berth. Following his discharge
from the Navy he had sailed coastwise on steam schooners, and
after attending a navigation school for two months, had procured
a license as chief mate of steam, any ocean and any tonnage.
Unfortunately for Mr. Gibney, he had a failing. Most of us have.
The most genial fellow in the world, he was cursed with too much
brains and imagination and a thirst which required quenching
around pay-day. Also, he had that beastly habit of command which
is inseparable from a born leader; when he held a first mate's
berth, he was wont to try to "run the ship" and, on occasions,
ladle out suggestions to his skipper. Thus, in time, he had
acquired a reputation for being unreliable and a wind-bag, with
the result that skippers were chary of engaging him. Not to be
too prolix, at the time Captain Scraggs made the disheartening
discovery that he had to have a skipper for the _Maggie_, Mr.
Gibney found himself reduced to the alternative of longshore work
or a fo'castle berth in a windjammer bound for blue water.
With alacrity, therefore, Mr. Gibney had accepted Scraggs's offer
of seventy-five dollars a month--"and found"--to skipper the
_Maggie_ on her coastwise run. As a first mate of steam he had no
difficulty inducing the Inspectors to grant him a license to
skipper such an abandoned craft as the _Maggie_, and accordingly
he hung up his ticket in her pilot house and was registered as
her master, albeit, under a gentlemen's agreement, with Scraggs
he was not to claim the title of captain and was known to the
world as the _Maggie's_ first mate, second mate, third mate,
quartermaster, purser, and freight clerk. One Neils Halvorsen, a
solemn Swede with a placid, bovine disposition, constituted the
fo'castle hands, while Bart McGuffey, a wastrel of the Gibney
type but slower-witted, reigned supreme in the engine room. Also
his case resembled that of Mr. Gibney in that McGuffey's job on
the _Maggie_ was the first he had had in six months and he
treasured it accordingly. For this reason he and Gibney had been
inclined to take considerable slack from Captain Scraggs until
McGuffey discovered that, in all probability, no engineer in the
world, except himself, would have the courage to trust himself
within range of the _Maggie's_ boilers, and, consequently, he had
Captain Scraggs more or less at his mercy. Upon imparting this
suspicion to Mr. Gibney, the latter decided that it would be a
cold day, indeed, when his ticket would not constitute a club
wherewith to make Scraggs, as Gibney expressed it, "mind his P's
and Q's."
It will be seen, therefore, that mutual necessity held this
queerly assorted trio together, and, though they quarrelled
furiously, nevertheless, with the passage of time their own
weaknesses and those of the _Maggie_ had aroused in each for the
other a curious affection. While Captain Scraggs frequently
"pulled" a monumental bluff and threatened to dismiss both Gibney
and McGuffey--and, in fact, occasionally went so far as to order
them off his ship, on their part Gibney and McGuffey were wont
to work the same racket and resign. With the subsidence of their
anger and the return to reason, however, the trio had a habit of
meeting accidentally in the Bowhead saloon, where, sooner or
later, they were certain to bury their grudge in a foaming beaker
of steam beer, and return joyfully to the _Maggie_.
Of all the little ship's company, Neils Halvorsen, colloquially
designated as "The Squarehead," was the only individual who was,
in truth and in fact, his own man. Neils was steady, industrious,
faithful, capable, and reliable; any one of a hundred deckhand
jobs were ever open to Neils, yet, for some reason best known to
himself, he preferred to stick by the _Maggie_. In his dull way
it is probable that he was fascinated by the agile intelligence
of Mr. Gibney, the vitriolic tongue of Captain Scraggs, and the
elephantine wit and grizzly bear courage of Mr. McGuffey. At any
rate, he delighted in hearing them snarl and wrangle.
However, to return to the _Maggie_ which we left entering the
tule fog a few miles north of Pilar Point: