I wasn't strong for chartering any tugs and let everybody know about it. We had no money to be chartering tugs, anyway, and, besides, if I had Judkins and Davies's little game sized up right, there'd be no loose tugs left to charter out of Bayport that night. "We'll make it in the Happy Day," I says.
"The Happy Day!" says Wheezer; and then: "Well, all right—if you think she'll make it."
We went down to tell Scoot, and found him reading from a book he was holding up before him with one hand and eating crackers and cheese and a smoked herring from a plate atop of a galley-stove with the other.
"A wonderful, wonderful man, Confucius," says Scoot to Wheezer; and then seeing me, too: "What! Hasn't that oil-packet departed yet?"
"Wonderful maybe, but stow him, whoever the loafer is, 'n' listen to me 'n' the captain," says Wheezer. And Scoot listens, and before I was half through he stows Confucius—a fine, fat volume, with a leaf turned down to mark the place—under his mattress.
"I shall need a helper," says Scoot. "And also I think it will be wise for me to prepare some fresh applications of Leakitis if we are to put out to sea in this venerable ark to-night."
Up to the Blue Light saloon there was always a bum or two looking for a bit of change. On the way there I passed the Bayport Hotel and saw that Captain Judkins and Captain Davies had already an admiring audience to listen to the disaster to the Yucatan.
A hard-looking party was trying to hold the barkeeper up for a drink when I reached the Blue Light. He was the only being in the place who looked husky enough to lift more than the weight of his elbow to the level of his shoulder. I offered him ten dollars for the next twenty-four hours. "To work on a hurry-up job on a steam-lighter," I explained. "That's if you're tough enough for it on a windy night," I added.
"Tough work? William T. Coots is my name—and the T stands for tough."
"Come on then," I said, "here's one dollar down." It was the last dollar I had.