"258 California St., San Francisco, Cal.

"Have offer _Narcissus_, coal Norfolk Batavia or Manila, charterers
undecided, Pernambuco for orders, ten dollars per ton. Shall we close?
Answer.

"SEABORN"

2 boards, 1" x 8" and up, and too great a percentage of 4" x 6"-20'
No. 1 clear. And there were mighty few clear twenty-foot logs coming
into the boom these days.

"Well, will a cat eat liver?" declared Cappy Ricks. "I should say we
do accept. Why, man, she'll make forty thousand dollars on the voyage,
and whether she goes to Batavia or Manila, we're certain to get a
cargo back."

"All right, I'll wire acceptance," Skinner replied, and paused long
enough to make a notation on the message: "O.K.--Ricks." Mr. Skinner
meant nothing in particular by that. He was a model of efficiency, and
that was his little way of placing the responsibility for the decision
in the event that the wisdom of said decision should, at some future
time, be questioned. Mr. Skinner never took unnecessary chances. He
always played a safe game.

It is necessary to state here also that Matt Peasley was not in the
office when that telegram arrived from Seaborn & Company. If he had
been this story would never have been written. He was down at Hunter's
Point drydock, superintending the repairs to the steam schooner Amelia
Ricks, which recently on a voyage to Seattle had essayed the overland