Bayport wasn't a regular oil port, but a half-dozen trainloads of oil had been dumped in there to head off some of our war-ships on some manoeuvering cruise and hadn't headed 'em off; so now it was to be transshipped North. After I'd signed on I came down aboard the _Happy Day_ to get my dunnage. "Judkins--Clarence Judkins, did you say, is the name o' the skipper o' that oil-tanker you're goin' on?" asks Wheezer. "A well-set-up, handsome-lookin' guy, the kind to ketch a lady's eye an' lookin' like he believed in ketchin' 'em, an' a noily black piece o' whisker under his ears? Yes? Then," says Wheezer, "lemme tell you about that lad--Slick Clarence." Wheezer generally had the asthma, but the mild winter of the South had cleaned out his speaking-tubes, so that at this time he could talk fluently. "Judkins used to go master o' big steam-yachts, but the last time I seen him I was workin' for a ship-buildin' concern on the Delaware, 'n' we was buildin' a big steam-yacht that Judkins was superintendin' the buildin' of for a mult-eye millionaire. 'Anything Captain Judkins wants let him have: anything he wants--anything and everything,' says the millionaire, who had plenty o' money an' was a good sport. I'd like to been workin' for him myself. "When Clarence'd get a little wine in--he never touched no beer nor cheap stuff--he used to like to have people listen to him talk," goes on Wheezer. 'D'y' s'pose I'm goin' to be standin' around 'n' lookin' on at those rich loafers havin' everythin' good in life an' me pikin' along on a hundred an' seventy-five a month? Not much!' says Clarence. 'Imagine a man o' my class havin' to stand to attention to a gangway when some o' those fat-waisted mushrooms an' their families come puffin' over the side! Look at me, that's got more brains 'n' looks, more class to me, than any owner ever I sailed out with--yeh, four times as much as most of 'em. An' some of 'em--why, I wouldn't use some of 'em to swab the decks o' their own yachts! Well, I might of their own yachts,' Clarence adds after a while, 'but not o' no yacht o' mine if I owned one. An' maybe I will be ownin' one afore long,' he says. "An' he did. Outer the extra stuff he ordered for the big steam-yacht he built a little steam-yacht for himself 'n' sold her to a party that never asked him how he come to be gettin' so fine a bargain for twenty thousand dollars. So there's Slick Clarence Judkins," winds up Wheezer. "An' will youse tell me what he's doin' master of a noil-tanker at a hundred an' fifty a month?"