ry of chief mates until they have first tried them out
as second mates and learned their strength and their weaknesses. Being
very human, Matt thought he should prove the exception to a fairly
hard-and-fast rule.

He had slept one night on a covered dock and skipped three meals before
it occurred to him that he had pursued the wrong tactics. He was too far
from Thomaston, Maine, where the majority of sailors have gone to school
with their captains. Back home there were a dozen masters who knew his
people, who knew him and his proved ability; but out here on the Pacific
Coast the skippers were nearly all Scandinavians, and Matt had to show
them something besides his documents.

He had failed signally to procure a single opportunity to demonstrate
his fitness for an executive position. After abandoning his plan to ship
as chief mate he had sought a second mate's berth, but failing to
find one, and with each idle day making deeper inroads into his scant
savings, he had at length descended to the ignominy of considering a job
as bosun. Even that was not forthcoming, and now his money was entirely
dissipated.

Now, when a big overgrown kid finds himself penniless three thousand
miles from a friend and minus three meals in succession, the fourth
omission of the daily bread is not likely to pass without violent
protest. Matt was still a growing boy, with a growing boy's appetite;
consequently on the morning of his second day of fasting he came to
the conclusion that, with so much of his life before him, a few months
wasted would, after all, have no material bearing on his future; so
he accepted a two months advance from a crimp and shipped aboard the
American barkentine Retriever as a common A.B.--a most disgraceful
action on the part of a boy, who, since eighteenth birthday, had been
used to having old sailors touch their foretop to him and address him as
"Mr. Peasley, sir."

CHAPTER III. UNDER THE BLUE STAR FLAG

Matt had been attracted to the barkentine Retriever for two very potent
reasons--the first was a delicious odor of stew emanating from her
galley; the second was her house flag, a single large, five-pointed blue
star on a field of white with scarlet trimming. Garnished left and right
with a golden wreath and below with the word Captain, Matt Peasley knew
that house flag, in miniature, would look exceedingly well on the front
of a uniform cap; for he now made up his mind to enter one service and
stick to