“Well, I'll be keel-hauled and skull-dragged,” Matt Peasley declared to Mr. Murphy. “Here's a telegram from the owners demanding my photograph.”
Mr. Murphy read the amazing message, scratched his raven poll, and declared his entire willingness to be damned.
“It's a trap,” he announced presently. “Don't send it. Matt, you look about twenty years old and for the next few years, if you expect to work under the Blue Star flag, you must remember your face isn't your fortune. You've got to be pickled in salt for twenty years to please Cappy Ricks. If he sees your photograph he'll fire you, Matt. I know that old crocodile. All he wants is an excuse to give you the foot, anyhow.”
“But he's ordered me to send it, Mike. How am I going to get out of it?”
As has been stated earlier in this tale, Mr. Murphy had an imagination.
“Go over into the town, sir,” he said, “and in any photograph gallery you can pick up a picture of some old man. Write your name across it and send it to Cappy. He'll be just as happy, then, as though he had good sense.”
“By George, I'll just do that!” Matt declared, and forthwith went ashore.
He sought the only photographer in Port Hadlock. At the entrance to the shop he found a glass case containing samples of the man's art, and was singularly attracted to the photograph of a spruce little old gentleman in a Henry Clay collar, long mutton-chop whiskers, and spectacles.
Moreover, to Matt's practiced eye, this individual seemed to savor of a Down-Easter. He was just the sort of man one might expect to bear the name of Matthew Peasley; so the captain mounted the stairs and sought the proprietor, from whom he purchased the picture in question for the trifling sum of fifty cents. Then he bore it away to the Retriever, scrawled his autograph across the old gentleman's hip and mailed the picture to Cappy Ricks.