"While we're
waitin' for this here towboat I'll brew a scuttle o' grog to
celebrate the discovery o' real seafarin' talent. Gib, my _dear_
boy, I'm proud of you. No matter what happens, I'll never have no
other navigatin' officer."
"Don't crow till you're out o' the woods," the astute Gibney
warned him.
CHAPTER VI
In the office of the Red Stack Tug Boat Company, Captain Dan
Hicks, master of the tug _Aphrodite_; Captain Jack Flaherty,
master of the _Bodega_, and Tiernan, the assistant superintendent
on night watch, sat around a hot little box stove engaged in that
occupation so dear to the maritime heart, to-wit: spinning yarns.
Dan Hicks had the floor, and was relating a tale that had to do
with his life as a freight and passenger skipper.
"We was makin' up to the dock when I see the general agent
standin' in the door o' the dock office--an' all of a sudden I
didn't feel so chipper about havin' crossed Humboldt bar in a
sou'easter. I saw the old man runnin' his eye along forty foot o'
twisted pipe railin', a wrecked bridge, three bent stanchions an'
every door an' window on the starboard side o' the ship stove in,
while the passengers crowded the rail lookin' cold an' miserable,
pea-green an' thankful.
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