ut. The voyage was undeniably coastwise and carried with
it all the risk of wind and wave. And in order to impress upon
Captain Scraggs the weight of their authority, the Inspectors
suspended for six months Captain Scraggs's bay and river license
for having dared to negotiate two coastwise voyages without
consulting them. Furthermore, they warned him that the next time
he did it they would condemn the fast and commodious _Maggie_.

In his extremity, Fate had sent to Captain Scraggs a large,
imposing, capable, but socially indifferent person who responded
to the name of Adelbert P. Gibney. Mr. Gibney had spent part of
an adventurous life in the United States Navy, where he had
applied himself and acquired a fair smattering of navigation.
Prior to entering the Navy he had been a foremast hand in clipper
ships and had held a second mate's berth. Following his discharge
from the Navy he had sailed coastwise on steam schooners, and
after attending a navigation school for two months, had procured
a license as chief mate of steam, any ocean and any tonnage.

Unfortunately for Mr. Gibney, he had a failing. Most of us have.
The most genial fellow in the world, he was cursed with too much
brains and imagination and a thirst which required quenching
around pay-day. Also, he had that beastly habit of command which
is inseparable from a born leader; when he held a first mate's
berth, he was wont to try to "run the ship" and, on occasions,
ladle out suggestions to his skipper. Thus, in time, he had
acquired a reputation for being unreliable and a wind-bag, with
the result that skippers were chary of engaging him. Not to be
too prolix, at the time Captain Scraggs made the disheartening
discovery that he had to have a skipper for the _Maggie_, Mr.
Gibney found himself reduced to the alternative of longshore work
or a fo'castle berth in a windjammer bound for blue water.

With alacrity, therefore, Mr. Gibney had accepted Scraggs's offer
of seventy-five dollars a month--"and found"--to skipper the
_Maggie_ on her coastwise run. As a first mate of steam he had no
difficulty inducing the Inspectors to grant him a license to
skipper such an abandoned craft as the _Maggie_, and accordingly
he hung up his ticket in her pilot house and was registered as
her master, albeit, under a gentlemen's agreement, with Scraggs
he was not to claim the title of captain and was known to the
world as the _Maggie's_ first mate, second mate, third mate,
q