himself, 'He's a strict one--an endorsement on it already, and that
_Savannah_ captain, he must be a strict one, too. What are they trying
to do--trying to catch me below when I ought to be on deck? I guess
not.' He had heard of chaps that you thought you were safe with and you
stretched a point or two to help them out, one of those little things
that anybody would think would get by all right; and then, when
something went wrong, they'd turn around and say, 'Why did you allow
this?' and you had no authority to show why you did allow it. There was
that last case at League Island, and a friend of his, only the year
before. There were two damaged rubber raincoats and a pair of old rubber
boots, and the commandant that time had said to his friend: 'See here,
I'm tired of looking at those things. Why don't you auction 'em off some
day and get rid of 'em?' And the captain of the yard's friend got busy
and hectographed letters were mailed to all the junk-dealers in the
city, and posted in the post-office and custom-house corridors, and the
sale advertised in the local papers, according to the law. And after the
sixty days required by the law, they were auctioned off with some other
junk. There were thirteen people attended the sale, but only one bid,
and that from a little stooped fellow with the beard of a prophet, who
offered sixty-seven cents for the lot, and took it off in a two-wheeled
hand-cart he'd brought with him. And they turned in the sixty-seven
cents, together with the bill for advertising--six dollars and
seventy-five cents--and considered they had done quite a stroke of
business. But back comes a letter from the Bureau of Profit and Loss--or
so the captain of the yard said he thought it was--wanting to know who
gave them authority to advertise and sell the property of the United
States without authority; and before the inquiry was concluded there
were three of them rolled through a G.C.M., and the captain of the
yard's friend was broke. And writing him about it, his friend had closed
his letter with: 'Don't ever, on your life, have anything to do with any