to Seattle, where the crew quit
the minute the vessel was made fast to the dock.

CHAPTER XIX. CAPPY SEEKS PEACE

"Here's a telegram for you, sir," Mr. Murphy remarked when Matt Peasley
came aboard after cashing a draft on the Blue Star Navigation Company to
pay off his crew. It proved to be from Cappy Ricks and said merely:

"Discharge that cargo of hides or take the consequences!"

"The old sinner thought I'd dog it, I suppose," Matt sneered, as he
passed the message to Mr. Murphy, who shivered as he read it. "I guess
you're elected, Mike," the skipper continued. "The second mate has quit.
However, it isn't going to be very hard on you this time. I was speaking
to the skipper of that schooner in the berth ahead of us, and he gave me
a recipe for killing the perfume of a cargo of green hides."

"If he'd given it to us in Antofagasta, I'd name a ship after him some
day," Mr. Murphy mourned.

"Well, we've gotten it in time to be of some use," Matt declared. "You
don't suppose I'm going to let this old snoozer Ricks get away with the
notion that he put one over on us, do you? Shall we haul Old Glory down?
No! Never! I'll just switch off the laughing gas on Cappy Ricks," and
the young skipper went ashore and wired his managing owner as follows:

"Green hides are the essence of horror if you do not know how
to handle them. Fortunately I do. Pour water on a green hide
and you muzzle the stink. I judge from your last telegram you
thought you handed me something."

When Cappy Ricks got that telegram he flew into a rage and refused to
believe Matt Peasley's statement until he had first called up a dealer
in hides and confirmed it. The entire office staff wondered all that day
what made Cappy so savage.

By the following day, however, Cappy's naturally optimistic nature had
reasserted itself. He admitted to himself that he had fanned out, but
still the knowledge brought him some comfort.

"He's walloped me so," Cappy soliloquized, "he just can't help writing
and crowing about it. If I didn't do anything else I bet I've pried
a letter out of him. It certainly will be a comfort to see something
except a telegram and a statement of account from that fellow."

However, when the report of the voyage arrived, Mr. Skinner reported
that it contained no letter. Cappy's face reflected his disappointment.

"I guess you'll have to go stronger than green hides to get a yelp out
of that fellow," Mr. Skinner predi