a berth with one of Cappy Ricks' competitors as a celluloid dog
chasing an asbestos cat through Hades.

The reader will readily appreciate, therefore, the apprehensions which
assailed Cappy Ricks when the Blue Star Navigation Company discovered
it had on its payroll one Matthew Peasley, a Nobody from Nowhere, who
not only had the insufferable impudence to apply for a job skippering
the finest windjammer in the fleet, but when rebuffed in no uncertain
terms, refused to withdraw his application, and defied his owners to
fire him. Such a preposterous state of affairs borders so closely on
the realm of fancy as to require explanation; hence, for the nonce let
us leave Cappy Ricks and Mr. Skinner to their sordid task of squeezing
dividends out of the Blue Star Navigation Company and turn the
searchlight of inquiry upon the amazing Matthew.



CHAPTER II

THE MAN FROM BLUE WATER


If, instead of advancing the theory that man sprang from a monkey,
Darwin had elected to nominate the duck for that dubious honor, there
is no doubt but that he would have pointed to the Peasley family, of
Thomaston, Maine, as evidence of the correctness of his theory of
evolution. The most casual student of natural history knows that the
instant a duckling chips its shell it toddles straightway to the
nearest water. The instant a male Peasley could cut his mother's
apron strings, he, also, made for the nearest water, for the Peasleys