“Well, suppose I can’t just say what the service will be?”
“Then I can’t tell you just what the price will be.”
“Haven’t you a fixed price by the day?”
“For a fixed service, yes. A man comes to me and says, ‘What do you want to run down to Newport News to tow a barge, or say two barges, of coal—fifteen or eighteen hundred tons in a barge—to Boston?’ I tell him. I’ll tell you, if it’s anything of that kind.”
“’Tisn’t quite that.”
“Well, a man comes to me and says, ‘Say, I have a vessel under the lee of Cape Cod’—say it’s blowin’ a no’wester like now—a vessel say to anchor at Provincetown or Chatham——”
“Yes, yes, at Chatham——”
“— And you ask me what I’ll go and get her for and tow her to Boston? I’ll soon tell you, if you’ll tell me what her tonnage is.”
“Say a two-thousand-ton bark, and loaded with mahogany.”
“That’s a pretty big vessel and a pretty valuable cargo, and the wind’s liable to stay no’west for a while—blowin’ hard as it promises to, and a hard drag around Cape Cod and across the Bay in a no’wester——”