To begin, there was the task of superintending the installation of the
accommodations for the cargo of mules and horses. Cappy was particularly
interested in the ventilating system below decks, for he was fond of
horses and had resolved to deliver the cargo without the loss of a
single animal. Of no mediocre turn of mind mechanically, he, assisted by
Terry Reardon, made a few suggestions that the British veterinaries in
charge were very glad to accept.
The real enjoyment of the trip, however, Cappy found down at the
breaking corrals where the horses were detraining. They were all young
and full of life, and fully ninety per cent of them had only been
halter-broken. In the lot was many an outlaw whose ancestors had run
wild for generations in Nevada; and as the delivery contract specified
that a horse to be accepted must be broken--God save the mark!--as
Terence Reardon remarked after seeing one passed as broken, following
five minutes of furious pitching and squealing--Cappy Ricks was one of
the first at the corral and the last to leave. Perched on the topmost,
rail, he piped encouragement to the lank, flat-bellied border busters
who, a dozen times a day, risked life and limb at five dollars a bust.
Mike Murphy and Terence Reardon, who had ridden more than one China Sea
typhoon and West India hurricane, marvelled that men should take such
risks for any amount of money. Privately they considered Cappy Ricks
an accessory before the fact, inasmuch as Cappy hung up at least five
hundred dollars in small prizes for the vaqueros. Whenever they had
a “bad one” they could always induce Cappy to offer ten dollars for
staying two minutes and five dollars a minute for each minute over the
limit--which seldom reached two minutes. Also, Cappy was willing to
furnish two silver dollars whenever some adventurer thought he could put
a dollar between each leg and the saddle and have the dollars there when
the horse surrendered. They ran in a couple of trained buckers on Cappy
and depleted his bank roll considerably before he began to smell a rat.
To these plainsmen, charged with the destinies of the mounts for the
young British soldier, Cappy Ricks was known familiarly as Cap. Before
the last of the horses had been passed as broken and hustled aboard the
big _Narcissus_, Cappy knew each horse wrangler by his first name or
nickname, and had learned the intricacies of many hitherto unheard-of
games of chance that flourish along the Rio Grande. He was an expert
at cooncan, and Pangingi fascinated him; then they taught him Mexican
monte, and one worthless individual stole an ace out of the deck,
whereupon all hands had a joyous hack at Cappy, who, when informed
privately by his friend, Sam Daniels, foreman of the outfit, that he
was in bad company and being skinned alive, went uptown and bought some
specially constructed dice, which he introduced brazenly into a crap
game, thereby more than catching even. He was the last man in the world
a gang of wicked cowboys would suspect of guile; all of them, quite
foolishly, thought he had more money than brains.
Eventually, however, the _Narcissus_ was loaded, Cappy moved into the
owner's suite, and his new-found friends bunked in a temporary deck
house forward when they weren't busy below decks playing chambermaid to
the cargo. And with Cappy's motor cruiser swung in the cradle, ready
for launching from the main deck aft, the _Narcissus_ slipped out of
Galveston and went snoring across the Gulf of Mexico, bound for Le
Havre.
Mike Murphy was not happy, however. He resented Cappy Ricks, who would
persist in going below to inspect the cargo and in consequence smelled
like a hostler. Moreover, Michael was the port captain of the Blue
Star Navigation Company now and not the master of the ship; and the
_Narcissus_ wasn't out of sight of land before Mike made the discovery
that the boatswain of the ship was absolutely inefficient, that the cook
was wasteful, that the first officer was too talkative, and the skipper
too easy-going.
And these conditions, on a ship he had once commanded, irked Murphy
exceedingly. Terence Reardon was in much the same state of mind. Being
port engineer, he investigated the engine room and found that his
favorite monkey wrench had been lost; there were two leaky tubes in
the main boiler; the ash hoist was out of kilter; his successor in the
_Narcissus_ was carrying ten pounds of steam less than Terence used to
carry; and there was something not quite right with the condenser.
The engine room crew Terence characterized to Mike Murphy as a gang of
“vagabones,” and hinted darkly at sweeping changes when the ship should
get back to the United States. Once he went so far as to state that he
might have expected as much when, upon leaving the _Narcissus_ to become
port engineer, he had given her to his old first assistant; since he had
never known a first assistant, barring himself, to make a good chief!