When Mr. Gibney and McGuffey, wrapped in the calm thrall of their new-found financial independence, arrived at the _Maggie's_ berth, they were inclined to levity. Indeed, they had come for the express purpose of spoofing their late employer; to crow over him and grind his poor soul into the dirt. Fortunately for Scraggs, he was not aboard, but sounds of activity coming from the engine room aroused McGuffey's curiosity to such an extent that he descended thereto at great risk to a new suit of clothes and discovered four men at work on the boiler. They had cut the rivets and removed the head and at sight of the ruin disclosed within, Mr. McGuffey was truly shocked--and awed. Why he hadn't been blown to Kingdom Come months before was a profound mystery. He came up and joined Mr. Gibney on a pile of old hemp hawser coiled on the bulkhead. "Danged if I don't feel sorry for old Scraggsy, for all his meanness," he declared. "It's goin' to cost him five hundred dollars to patch up the old boiler an' keep the _Maggie_ runnin' until he can ship a new boiler. The ol' fool don't know a thing about the job himself an' there's four men down there, without a foreman, soldierin' on him an' soakin' him a dollar an' a half an hour overtime. He's in so deep now he might as well jump into bankruptcy entirely an' put in a set o' piston rings, repack the pumps an' the stuffin-box, shim up the bearin's an' do a lot of little things the old _Maggie's_ just hollerin' to have done." "To err is human; to forgive divine," Mr. Gibney orated. "Come to think of it, Mac, we give the old man all that was comin' to him the other day--a little bit more, mebbe. He must be raw an' bleedin', an' it wouldn't be sporty to plague him some more." "Durned if I don't feel like jumpin' into a suit of dungarees an' helpin' him out in that engine room, Gib." "Troubles always comes in a flock, Bart. The Squarehead tells me his new navigatin' officer an' the new engineer has jumped their jobs. It's a dollar to a dime he asks us to come back if he sees us half way willin' to be friendly an' forget the past." "Well," the philosophical McGuffey declared. "Seein' as how we've reformed, even with money in bank, we might just as well be workin' as loafin'. There's more money in it. An' if it wasn't that Scraggs is so ornery there's worse jobs than me an' you had on the old _Maggie_." "I been wonderin' if we couldn't reform Scraggsy by heapin' coals of fire on his head, Bart." "What d'ye mean? Heapin' coals o' fire on Scraggs'd sure keep an ash hoist busy." "Oh, I dunno, Bart. The old man has his troubles. There's Mrs. Scraggs a-peckin' at him every time he goes home, an' the _Maggie's_ a worry, not to mention the fact that there ain't much more'n a decent livin' for him in the green-pea trade. An' he ain't gittin' any younger, Bart. You got to bear that in mind."