Part 2 (2/2)
The weird call for help brought Scraggs around to a fuller realization of the enormity of the disaster which had overtaken him. In his agony, he forgot to curse his navigating officer for the latter's stubbornness in refusing to turn back when the fog threatened. He clutched Mr. Gibney by the right arm, thereby interrupting for an instant the dismal outburst from the _Maggie's_ siren.
”Gib,” he moaned, ”I'm a ruined man. How're we ever to get the old sweetheart off whole? Answer me that, Gib. Answer me, I say.
How're we to get my _Maggie_ off the beach?”
Mr. Gibney shook himself loose from that frantic grip and continued his pull on the whistle until the _Maggie_, taking a false note, quavered, moaned, spat steam a minute, and subsided with what might be termed a nautical sob. ”Now see what you've done,” he bawled. ”You've made me bust the whistle.”
”Answer my question, Gib.”
”We'll never get her off if you don't quit interferin' an' give me time to think. I'll admit there ain't much of a chance, because it's dead low water now an' just as soon as the tide is at the flood she'll drive further up the beach an' fall apart.”
”Perhaps McGuffey will have heart enough to telephone into the city for a tug.”
”'Tain't scarcely probable, Scraggsy. You abused him vile an'
threw a lot of fodder at him.”
”I wish I'd been took with paralysis first,” Scraggs wailed bitterly. ”You'd best jump ash.o.r.e, Gib, an' 'phone in. We're just below the Cliff House and you can run up to one o' them beach resorts an' 'phone in to the Red Stack Tug Boat Company.”
”'Twouldn't be ethics for me, the registered master o' the _Maggie_, to desert the s.h.i.+p, Scraggsy, old stick-in-the-mud.
What's the matter with gettin' your own shanks wet?”
”I da.s.sen't, Gib. I've had a touch of chills an' fever ever since I used to run mate up the San Joaquin sloughs. Here's a nickel to drop in the telephone slot, Gib. There's a good fellow.”
”Scraggsy, you're deludin' yourself. Show me a tugboat skipper that would come out here on a night like this to pick up the S.S.
_Maggie_, two decks an' no bottom an' loaded with garden truck, an' I'll wag my ears an' look at the back o' my neck. She ain't worth it.”
”Ain't worth it! Why, man, I paid fifteen hundred hard cash dollars for her.”
”Fourteen hundred an' ninety-nine dollars an' ninety-nine cents too much. They seen you comin'. However, grantin' for the sake of argyment that she's worth the tow, the next question them towboat skippers'll ask is: 'Who's goin' to pay the bill?' It'll be two hundred an' fifty dollars at the lowest figger, an' if you got that much credit with the towboat company you're some high financier. Ain't that logic?”
”I'm afraid,” Scraggs replied sadly, ”it is. Still, they'd have a lien on the _Maggie_----”
”Steamer ahoy!” came a voice from the beach.
”Man with a megaphone,” Mr. Gibney cried. ”Ahoy! Ahoy, there!”
”Who are you an' what's the trouble?”
Captain Scraggs took it upon himself to answer: ”American steamer _Mag_----”
Mr. Gibney sprang upon him tigerishly, placed a h.o.r.n.y, tobacco-smelling palm across Scraggs's mouth and effectively smothered all further sound. ”American steamer _Yankee Prince_,”
he bawled like a veritable Bull of Bashan, ”of Boston, Hong Kong to Frisco with a general cargo of sandal wood, rice, an' silk.
Where're we at?”
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