ere the most harrowing of
McGuffey's life. Captain Scraggs knew his engineer would not
resign while he, Scraggs, owed him three hundred dollars;
wherefore he was not too particular to put a bridle on his tongue
when things appeared to go wrong. McGuffey longed to kill him,
but dared not. When, eventually, the railroad had been extended
sufficiently far down the coast to enable the farmers to haul
their goods to the railroad in trucks, the _Maggie_ automatically
went out of the green-pea trade; simultaneously, Captain
Scraggs's note to McGuffey fell due and the engineer demanded
payment. Scraggs demurred, pleading poverty, but Mr. McGuffey
assumed such a threatening attitude that reluctantly Scraggs paid
him a hundred and fifty dollars on account, and McGuffey extended
the balance one year--and quit.

"See that you got that hundred and fifty an' the interest in your
jeans the next time we meet," he warned Scraggs as he went
overside.

Time passed. For a month the _Maggie_ plied regularly between
Bodega Bay and San Francisco in an endeavour to work up some
business in farm and dairy produce, but a gasoline schooner cut
in on the run and declared a rate war, whereupon the _Maggie_
turned her blunt nose riverward and for a brief period essayed
some towing and general freighting on the Sacramento and San
Joaquin. It was unprofitable, however, and at last Captain
Scraggs was forced to lay his darling little _Maggie_ up and take
a job as chief officer of the ferry steamer _Encinal_, plying
between San Francisco and Oakland. In the meantime, Mr. McGuffey,
after two barren months "on the beach," landed a job as second
assistant on a Standard Oil tanker running to the West Coast,
while thrifty Neils Halvorsen invested the savings of ten years
in a bay scow known as the _Willie and Annie_, arrogated to
himself the title of captain, and proceeded to freight hay,
grain, and paving stones from Petaluma.

The old joyous days of the green-pea trade were gone forever,
and many a night, as Captain Scraggs paced the deck of the
ferryboat, watching the ferry tower loom into view, or the
scattered lights along the Alameda shore, he thought longingly of
the old _Maggie_, laid away, perhaps forever, and slowly rotting
in the muddy waters of the Sacramento. And he thought of Mr.
Gibney, too, away off under the tropic stars, leading the
care-free life of a real sailor at last, and of Bartholomew
McGuffey, imbibing "pulque" in the "cantin