"We won't say nothin' more about it, Gib, except that while I'd like to accept your kind offer an' put you back on the job again, I--I just can't bring myself to do it. I'll have to forget first." "Forget what? Bart, is Scraggsy gone nutty?" "Out with it, Scraggs," Mr. McGuffey urged. "Spit it out, whatever it is." "I'd rather not, but since you ask me I suppose I might as well. Gib, ever since me an' you first hooked up together, away back in the corner o' my head there's been lurkin' a suspicion that once before, a long time ago, you an' me have had some business dealin's, but for the life o' me I couldn't place you. One minute I'd just be a-staggerin' on the brink of memory, as the feller says, an' the next it'd slip away from me. But just now, when you mentioned Bull McGinty an' the Brotherhood o' the South Seas--well, Gib, it all come back to me like a flash. Bull McGinty an' the schooner _Dashin' Wave_!" Captain Scraggs shook his head as if his thoughts threatened to congeal in his brain and he desired to shake them up. "Bull had a dash o' the tar-brush in his make up, if I don't disremember, an' you was his young mate. Man, how funny you did look with them long red whiskers--an' you little more'n a boy." "Jumpin' Jehosophat, Scraggsy! Was you one o' the Brotherhood?" Captain Scraggs came close and thrust his face up for Mr. Gibney's inspection. "Gib," he said solemnly, "look at me! Touch the cord o' memory an' think back. D'ye remember that pore little feller you robbed of five hundred dollars twenty-odd year ago in the schooner _Dashin' Wave_? D'ye remember that typhoon we was in an' how, when I was that tuckered out an' so seasick I couldn't stand up, you made me pump ship an' when I protested, you stuck a horse pistol under my nose an' _made_ me? That man, Adelbert P. Gibney was _me! Me! Me!_" Scraggs's voice rose in a crashing crescendo; his teeth clicked together and he shook his skinny fist under the great Gibney nose. Gibney paled and drew away from him. "How was I to know, Scraggsy?" he faltered. "The whole bunch was runts--sickly, measly little fellers. Nevertheless an' agin, you shouldn't ought to have any kick comin'. You had a fine trip an' a heap of adventure an' me an' Bull paid your passage back to San Francisco. Come, Scraggs. Be sensible. What's the use holdin' a grudge after twenty-five years?" "Oh, I ain't holdin' a grudge, exactly, Gib, my boy. I admit I had a good run for my money an' it was a smart piece o' work, an' I got to admire the idea, same as I got to admire the seamanship you displayed sailin' the _Chesapeake_ single-handed. It ain't what you done to me as makes my blood boil. It's what you went an' done afterward." "What'd I do afterward? You can't hang nothin' on me, Phineas P. Scraggs. Bluffin' don't go. Cough it up."