No skipper that ever set foot on a bridge could pass that scaly hulk unmoved. Matt Peasley said uncomplimentary things about the owners of the vessel and directed the launchman to pass in under her stern, in order that he might read her name. She proved to be the Narcissus, of London.
He stood in the stern of the launch, staring thoughtfully after the Narcissus, and before his mind there floated that vision of the barnacles and eelgrass, infallible evidence that the years had been long since the Narcissus had been hauled out.
“Do you know how long that steamer has lain there?” he queried of the launchman.
“I been runnin' launches to and from Hunters Point for seven years an' she was there when I come on the job,” the latter answered.
“It's no place for a good ship,” Matt Peasley murmured musingly. “She ought to be out on the dark blue, loaded and earning good money for her owners. I must find out why she isn't doing it.”
Having rendered a meticulous report to Cappy on the condition of the Amelia Ricks, Matt, his brain still filled with thoughts of that lonely big steamer swinging neglected in Mission Bay among the rotting oyster boats and old clipper ships waiting to be converted into coal hulks, proceeded to the Merchants' Exchange where Lloyds' Register soon put him in possession of the following information:
The steamer Narcissus had been built in Glasgow in 1894 by Sutherland & Sons, Limited. She was four hundred and fifty-five feet long, fifty-eight feet beam and thirty-one feet draft. She had triple-expansion engines of two thousand indicated horse power, two Scotch boilers, and was of seventy-five hundred tons net register.
“Huh!” Matt murmured. “She'll carry forty per cent. more than her registered tonnage; if I had the loading of her she'd carry fifty per cent. more, at certain seasons of the year. I wonder why her owners have let her lie idle for eight years? I'll have to ask Jerry Dooley. He knows everything about ships that a landsman can possibly know.”
Jerry Dooley had presided over the desk at the Merchants' Exchange for so many years that there was a rumor current to the effect that he had been there in the days when the water used to come up to Montgomery Street. Before Jerry's desk the skippers of all nations came and went; to him there drifted inevitably all of the little, intimate gossip of the shipping world. If somebody built a ship and she had trouble with her oil burners on the trial trip, Jerry Dooley would know all about it before that vessel got back to her dock again. If somebody else's ship was a wet boat, Jerry knew of it, and could, moreover, give one the name of the naval architect responsible; if a vessel had been hogged on a reef, Jerry could tell you the name of the reef, the date of the wreck, the location of the hog, and all about the trouble they had keeping her cargo dry as a result. To this human encyclopedia, therefore, did Matt Peasley come in his still-hunt for information touching the steamer Narcissus.
He opened negotiations by handing Jerry Dooley a good cigar. Jerry examined it, saw that it was a good cigar, and said: “I don't smoke myself, but I have a brother that does.” He fixed Matt Peasley with an alert, inquisitive eye and said: “Well, what do you know, Captain?”