Superintending the search is but a phrase. Corkey is exhibiting his mascot, pounding on the hotel bar and accepting the congratulations of all who will take a drink.
The four correspondents fall back on the Special Survivor and hope for sympathy.
"We have been discharged by our papers," they cry in bitter anger and deep chagrin.
"Can't you get us re-instated?" they implore, in eager hope.
"The man," says Corkey, judicially, "who don't know no better than to send that shipwreck as it was--well, excuse me, gentlemen, but he ought to get fired, I suppose." Corkey stands sidewise to the bar, his hand on the glass. He looks with affection on the mascot and ruminates. Then he brings his adamantine fist down on the bar to the peril of all glassware.
"Yes, sir! Now I was out on that old tub. I was right there when she drapped in the drink. If anybody might make it just as it was, I might--mightn't I?"
"You might," they answer in admiration of a great man.
"Well, I didn't do no such foolish thing as you fellows, did I?"
"But why didn't you tell us, Mr. Corkey?"
"That isn't what my paper hired me to do. Is it, you cow-licked, cross-eyed, two-thumbed, six-toed stuttering moke?"