CHAPTER XII

THE CAMPAIGN OPENS


When Matt Peasley's Yankee combativeness, coupled with the accident of
birth in the old home town of Cappy Ricks, gained for him command of
the Blue Star Navigation Company's big barkentine, Retriever, he
lacked eight days of his twenty-first birthday. He had slightly less
beard than the average youth of his years; and, despite the fact that
he had been exposed almost constantly to salty gales since his
fourteenth birthday, he did not look his age. And of all the
ridiculous sights ashore or afloat the most ridiculous is a sea
captain with the body of a Hercules and the immature features of an
eighteen-year-old boy.

Indeed, such a great, soft, innocent baby type was Matt Peasley that
even the limited sense of humor possessed by his motley crew forbade
their reference to him, after custom immemorial, as the Old Man. The
formal title of captain seemed equally absurd; so they compromised by
dubbing him Mother's Darling.

"If," quoth Mr. Michael Murphy, chief kicker of the Retriever, over a
quiet pipe with Mr. Angus MacLean, the second mate, as the vessel lay
at anchor in Grays Harbor, "Cappy Ricks had laid eyes on Mother's
Darling before ordering him to Seattle to go up for his master's
ticket, the old fox would have scuttled the ship sooner than trust
that baby with her."

"Ye'll nae be denying the lad kens his business," Mr. MacLean