I hunted up Captain Oliver Sickles of the _Orion_, and I found him having a drink in the bar of the Tidewater Cafe. He looked as if he'd welcome a quarrel, but that was nothing strange in him. I put the same question to him that I had put to his cousin, and the answer came in almost the same words as to the medium glass and the westerly wind, but at that point he looked sharply at me. "And when does the _Sirius_ sail?" he asked. "The morning after to-morrow." "And"--suspiciously--"who first that morning, the _Sirius_ or me?" "I don't know. You'll be loaded and cleared together--it's for yourselves to say who sails first." "And what did he say?" Captain Oliver had a hectoring way about him which used to make me promise myself that some day, after he'd done hauling coal for my outfit, I'd tell him what I thought of him. "What did who say?" I asked him now. "Warn't you talkin' to my cousin awhile ago about the same thing?" "I was, though I don't remember telling you about it." "H-m," he sneered, "I thought so. Y' always go to him first." "Yes, I do!" I snapped at him. "And why? Because he knows his mind. And he's a man to give an answer without using up an afternoon talking about it. He said he'd have the _Sirius_ to anchor in Boston Harbor by Christmas Eve or give me a good reason why." "He did, did he? Then set this down in your log"--with the end of a prodigiously thick forefinger he was tapping the bar as he said it:--"The _Orion_ will be laying to anchor in Boston Harbor by Christmas Eve or there'll be a _damn_ good reason why." Right here I should say that there was more than a rivalry of craftsmanship between the Sickles cousins. Once, thinking it was the _Sirius_, Norman Sickles's sweetheart, a very pretty and a very good girl, had gone aboard the _Orion_ as it lay in Boston Harbor. Oliver at once locked her in the cabin, put to sea, and carried her to Philadelphia, where, urged by her mother, and to save her good name as she thought, she married Oliver. But that her heart was still with Norman was current gossip in the fleet. Because he had lately heard that I had been free-spoken in my comment on that exploit was why Captain Oliver now--his forefinger tapping the bar and he eying me from under his hat-brim--added to his "good reason" the word that, no matter what my firm or any other firm thought of this or that, which warn't none o' their business anyway, he wanted 'em all to understand that he was as capable of getting a quick passage out of a vessel as any Norman Sickles that ever walked; which gave me a fine chance to say: "Well, the place to prove that is at sea, and not in a barroom ashore." Not very delicate--no; but it sent him almost on the run down aboard his vessel, to clear his decks for loading, which was mostly what I was after.