Now, as between the Irish and the Scotch, history records no preponderance of courage in either, for both are Gaels and a comparison is difficult.
However, Scotchmen are a conservative race and will walk round a fight rather than be forced into it, while all that is necessary to make an Irishman fight is to impugn his courage.
Mr. Murphy had seen the fight ahead of the Retriever and he did not blame Mr. MacLean for side-stepping it. Indeed, he had intended pursuing the same course; but Matt Peasley, by his latest remark, had rendered that impossible. To desert now would savor of dishonor; and, moreover, Matt Peasley, though master, had called him by his Christian name. Mr. Murphy touched his forelock respectfully.
“I am not Scotch,” he announced, with a slight emphasis on the pronoun. “Shame on you, Angus MacLean—ditching the skipper like that!”
“Sticks an' stones may break ma bones, but names'll never hur-rt me,” Mr. MacLean retorted. “I tell ye I dinna care for creosote in ma porridge.” And he followed Matt Peasley aft, where the latter paid him off and gave him five minutes to pack and get off the ship. Immediately after supper the cook followed the second mate; but, since the former was a Jap and probably the worst marine cook in the world, his departure occasioned no heartache.
“We'll board at the mill cook-house until we're loaded, Mike,” Matt Peasley informed the mate. “They have a good Chink up there.”
Mr. Murphy sighed as he loaded his pipe and struck a match for it.
“It does look to me, sir,” he replied, with that touch of conscious superiority so noticeable in the Celt, “as though Cappy Ricks might have slipped this cargo to a Dutchman.”
The Retriever commenced taking on cargo at seven o'clock the following morning, with Mr. Murphy on shipboard and Matt Peasley on the dock superintending the gang of stevedores. Ordinarily the masters of lumber freighters ship their crews before commencing to load, in order that sailors at forty dollars a month may obviate the employment of an equal number of stevedores at forty cents an hour; but Mr. Murphy, out of his profound experience, advised against this course, as tending to spread the news of the Retriever's misfortune and militate against securing a crew when the vessel should be loaded and lying in the stream ready for sea. Men employed now, he explained, would only desert. The thing to do was to let a Seattle crimp furnish the crew, sign them on before the shipping commissioner in Seattle, bring them aboard drunk, tow to sea, and let the rascals make the best of a bad bargain.
The hold was about half filled, and the ship carpenters were at work cutting ports in the Retriever's bows, when Matt Peasley discovered that the mill did not have in hand any order for lumber to be used as stowage to snug up the cumbersome cargo below decks and keep it from rolling and working in a seaway. Accordingly he wired his owners as follows: