"All hands below to the galley!" Scraggs shouted. "While we're waitin' for this here towboat I'll brew a scuttle o' grog to celebrate the discovery o' real seafarin' talent. Gib, my _dear_ boy, I'm proud of you. No matter what happens, I'll never have no other navigatin' officer." "Don't crow till you're out o' the woods," the astute Gibney warned him. CHAPTER VI In the office of the Red Stack Tug Boat Company, Captain Dan Hicks, master of the tug _Aphrodite_; Captain Jack Flaherty, master of the _Bodega_, and Tiernan, the assistant superintendent on night watch, sat around a hot little box stove engaged in that occupation so dear to the maritime heart, to-wit: spinning yarns. Dan Hicks had the floor, and was relating a tale that had to do with his life as a freight and passenger skipper. "We was makin' up to the dock when I see the general agent standin' in the door o' the dock office--an' all of a sudden I didn't feel so chipper about havin' crossed Humboldt bar in a sou'easter. I saw the old man runnin' his eye along forty foot o' twisted pipe railin', a wrecked bridge, three bent stanchions an' every door an' window on the starboard side o' the ship stove in, while the passengers crowded the rail lookin' cold an' miserable, pea-green an' thankful. No need for me to do any explainin'. He knew. He throws his dead fish eye up to me on what's left o' the bridge an' I felt my job was vacant. "'We was hit by a sea or two on Humboldt bar, sir,' I says, as if gettin' hit by a sea or two an' havin' the ship gutted was an every-day experience." "'Is that so, Hicks?' says he sweetly. 'Well, now, if you hadn't told me that I'd ha' jumped to the conclusion that a couple o' the mess boys had got fightin' an' wrecked the ship before you could separate 'em. Why in this an' that,' he says, 'didn't you stick inside when any dumb fool could see the bar was breakin'?' "'I wanted to keep the comp'ny's sailin' schedule unbroken, sir,' I says, tryin' to be funny. "'Well, Captain,' he says, 'it 'pears to me you've broken damned near everything else tryin' to do it.' "I was certain he was goin' to set me down, but the worst I got was a three months' lay-off to teach me common sense----" The telephone rang and Tiernan answered. Hicks and Flaherty hitched forward in their chairs to listen. "Hello.... Yes, Red Stack office.... Steamer _Yankee Prince_.... What's that?... silk and rice?... Half a mile below the Cliff House, eh?... Sure, I'll send a tug right away, Lindstrom." Tiernan hung up and faced the two skippers. "Gentlemen," he announced, "here's a chance for a little salvage money to-night. The American steamer _Yankee Prince_ is ashore half a mile below the Cliff House. She's a big tramp with a valuable cargo from Hong Kong, with her rudder gone and her crank shaft busted." "It's high water at twelve thirty-seven," Jack Flaherty pleaded. "You'd better send me, Tiernan. The _Bodega_ has more power than the _Aphrodite_."