"He's a good man and well recommended, and a thorough seaman."
"That'll be a change," said Plump. "Poor old Brogger was fit to skipper a canal-barge. All right, if you say so. We're ready if your new man is. All we want is another hand, and he's coming on board to-night if we sail to-morrow. We've had luck that way, whatever else has gone wrong. If Brogger had lived I believe he'd have lost the whole crowd the way he was shaping. He grew meaner every day."
And that night the new skipper came on board. He shook hands with his officers, and in half an hour Plump had almost forgotten his want of a master's ticket, and Dodman was swearing by the new man; for Captain John Greig was a man, and no mistake! He was quick and hard and bright and humorous, and there was that about him which was better than any extra certificate—he looked a seaman, and was one. And he was as happy as he could be to get a good ship. The vessel in which he had been mate had gone home without him, owing to his getting smallpox.
"I think we shall do," said Greig. "I wonder what became of that old duffer Brogger? Well, it's an ill wind that don't serve some skipper. I'm a skipper at last, and with any luck I'll stay so."
Early next morning, just as the Enchantress was making ready to tow down the river, and when the whole world was still dark save where the dawn on the great peak of Mount Hood showed a strange high gleam to the eastward, Lant and Gulliver's chief runner came on board and saw the mate.
"The man we agreed to put on board is sick," said the runner, "and as all our crowd here is fixed up for, we've wired down to Astoria to our other house to send you a good man in his place."
"Right," said Plump, who was standing on the fo'c'sle head—"right you are. Ay, ay, sir, let go that head-line! Jump and haul—haul it in, men!"
The men were cheerful; there was something in the voice of a real man now on the poop that bucked them up. And they knew as well as Plump himself that he was happy to have got rid of Brogger. The Enchantress looked as if she was to be a happy ship on the passage home.
"You seem a derned happy family," said the runner to Jack Eales as he skipped ashore.
"So we are," said Jack. "But tell us what's the name of the chap that'll come aboard at Astoria."