t. "Well, pard, if you're not
sick, I'd like to say a good many things. I suppose them ducks at
Washington weakened. If they give me collector, here's my slate."

Corkey produces a long list of names, written on copy-paper.

"I bet she don't budge an inch," he remarks, as he hears the north wind
and waves pounding at one end, and the engine pounding at the other.

"Needn't be afraid, pard. Sometimes they go out in Georgian Bay and
burn some coal. Then if they can't git anywhere, they come back."

Corkey is pleased with his own remark. "Sometimes," he adds, "they
don't come back. They are bluffed back by the wind."

Lockwin sits in the same uncommunicative attitude.

"Pardner, you didn't come out into Georgian Bay for nothing. I know
that. So I will tell you what I am going to do with the collectorship.
By the great jumping Jewhillikins, that's a wave in the stateroom
windows! I never see anything like that."

The captain passes.

"High sea, cap'n!" It is not in good form for Corkey to rise. He is a
passenger, with a navigator's reputation to sustain.

"High hell!" says the captain.

"What a hullabaloo them choppers is a-making," says Corkey to Lockwin.
"I reckon they're about scared to death. Well, as I was a-saying, I
want to know what the jam-jorum said."

Corkey is terrified. He does not fear that he will go down in Georgian
Bay. He dreads to hear the bursting of the bladders that are
supporting him in his sea of glory.

Lockwin starts as from a waking dream:

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Corkey, but I could have told you at the start
that the administration, when it was confronted by the question whether
or not it would give you anything, said; 'No!' It will give you
nothing. The administration said it would not appoint you lightkeeper
at Ozaukee."

"There hain't no light at Ozaukee," says Corkey.

"That's what the administration said, too," replies Lockwin.

"Did you tell 'em I got you fine?" asks Corkey.

"I told them I thought you had as good a case as I had."

"Did you tell 'em I'd knock seventeen kinds of stuffin' out of their
whole party? That I'd--"

Corkey is at his wits ends. His challenge has been accepted. At the
outset he had saved fifty twenty-dollar gold pieces out of his wages.
He has spent fifteen already. The thought of a contest against the
machine candidate carries with it the loss of the rest of the little
hoard. He has boasted that he will retain Emery Sto