Wheezer noticed it before I did, and we thought it was some new kind of a breakfast-food, especially when a note alongside it in Scoot's writing said: "To be tried with one part milk." We gave it two parts milk--we had milk aplenty--and sprinkled a little sugar over it. Scoot's idea was to calk it into any open seam and let the water coming in swell it up. After it swelled up it would harden till it was like concrete. But that wasn't explained to us till later. It had reached the swelling-up stage in both our stomachs when Scoot came back with the bacon for breakfast. "Heaven's greatest gift to sufferin' man--stomach-pumps!" said Wheezer when we were safe over it. But the chap that took over the _Annie_ didn't have any Scoot Schulte for a partner. About a week after he got her from us he went down to the dock one morning to go aboard, but he didn't see her anywhere. "I told 'em to have her here, six sharp!" he howls; "and here it's half past and no sign of her." But the _Annie_ was there all the time, only she was resting on bottom with only the top of her smoke-stack sticking up, and he didn't know it was her smoke-stack. While her crew was sleeping she'd been sinking. The men in the top bunks got out almost in comfort, but the chaps in the lower bunks were breathing more water than air when they woke up; there was nobody drowned, though. It seems the Leakitis stuff had to be reapplied about once a month or it would soften up and float away, but Scoot forgot to tell him that. We expected to do great things with the _Happy Day_ in the lighterage business; but there wasn't any lighterage business to do after we took her over. After one month of it, with nothing but overhead charges, we were ready to quit. I told Wheezer and Scoot to sell her for anything they could get and send me my share. I was going North. I'd never let on in my letters to my wife but what the prospects were fine, and she'd been writing me of an option she'd got on a nice little single house with a sun-parlor that would be great for the baby to play in, and I saw where it was up to me to get back to some regular work. Besides, I'd been seven months away and I wanted to see for myself if the baby was actually walking. To save borrowing money for my passage North, I shipped for deck-hand on an oil-ship. I wanted to ship for seaman, but I heard the skipper say to a man ahead of me: "I got all the seamen I need. What I want is a couple of men to swab decks and look after paint and brass-work and so on--deck-hands----" He looked pretty sharp at me when I stepped up. "My last job," I said before he could get started, "was rustling freight on a harbor lighter," and I pointed out the _Happy Day_ to him across the harbor. "Oh," he said, "that's all right. Sign here." So I signed there, for deck-hand on the oil-ship _Yucatan_, Clarence Judkins, master.