et register.

"Huh!" Matt murmured. "She'll carry forty per cent. more than her
registered tonnage; if I had the loading of her she'd carry fifty per
cent. more, at certain seasons of the year. I wonder why her owners
have let her lie idle for eight years? I'll have to ask Jerry Dooley. He
knows everything about ships that a landsman can possibly know."

Jerry Dooley had presided over the desk at the Merchants' Exchange for
so many years that there was a rumor current to the effect that he had
been there in the days when the water used to come up to Montgomery
Street. Before Jerry's desk the skippers of all nations came and went;
to him there drifted inevitably all of the little, intimate gossip of
the shipping world. If somebody built a ship and she had trouble with
her oil burners on the trial trip, Jerry Dooley would know all about it
before that vessel got back to her dock again. If somebody else's ship
was a wet boat, Jerry knew of it, and could, moreover, give one the name
of the naval architect responsible; if a vessel had been hogged on a
reef, Jerry could tell you the name of the reef, the date of the wreck,
the location of the hog, and all about the trouble they had keeping her
cargo dry as a result. To this human encyclopedia, therefore, did Matt
Peasley come in his still-hunt for information touching the steamer
Narcissus.

He opened negotiations by handing Jerry Dooley a good cigar. Jerry
examined it, saw that it was a good cigar, and said: "I don't smoke
myself, but I have a brother that does." He fixed Matt Peasley with an
alert, inquisitive eye and said: "Well, what do you know, Captain?"

"Nothing much. What do you know about the steamer Narcissus?"

Jerry Dooley scratched his red head.

"Narcissus!" he murmured. "Narcissus! By George, it's a long time
since I heard of her. Has she just come into port?" And he glanced
apprehensively at the register of arrivals and departures, wondering if
he hadn't overlooked the Narcissus.

"She's been in port eight years at least," Matt answered; "tucked away
down in Mission Bay, with a watchman aboard."

"Oh, I remember now," Jerry replied. "She belongs to the Oriental
Steamship Company. Old man Webb, of the Oriental Company, got all worked
up about the possibilities of the Oriental trade right after the Spanish
War. He had a lot of old bottoms running in the combined freight and
passenger trade and not making expenses when the war came along, and the
Govern