With the impudence and irreverence of his tender years, however, Matt
Peasley scorned this well-meant advice, notwithstanding the fact that
he knew it to be sound, for by shipping as second mate and remaining
in the same ship, sooner or later his chance would come. The first
mate would quit, or be promoted or drowned, or get drunk; and then his
shoes would be waiting for Matt tried and true, and the holder of a
first mate's ticket.

However, there is an old saw to the effect that youth must be served,
and young Matt desired a helping totally disproportionate to his
years, if not to his experience; hence he elected to ignore the fact
that shipmasters are wary of chief mates until they have first tried
them out as second mates and learned their strength and their
weaknesses. Being very human, Matt thought he should prove the
exception to a fairly hard-and-fast rule.

He had slept one night on a covered dock and skipped three meals
before it occurred to him that he had pursued the wrong tactics. He
was too far from Thomaston, Maine, where the majority of sailors have
gone to school with their captains. Back home there were a dozen
masters who knew his people, who knew him and his proved ability; but
out here on the Pacific Coast the skippers were nearly all
Scandinavians, and Matt had to show them something besides his
documents.

He had failed signally to procure a single opportunity to demonstrate
his fitness for an executive position. After abandoning his plan to
ship as chief mate he had sought a second mate's berth, but failing to
find one, and with each idle day making deeper inroads into his scant
savings, he had at length descended to the ignominy of considering a