“There's something wrong with you this morning, Cappy,” Redell declared, highly mystified. “You're too obliging. However, I'm not to be outgamed. I have a specification for a cargo of half a million feet for delivery at Sobre Vista, Peru; I've been trying for a month to place the order and nobody will accept it because nobody wants to guarantee delivery. On the other hand, the purchasers have been unable to get any ship owner to charter them a vessel to go to Sobre Vista without a guaranty of a perfectly prohibitive rate of demurrage per diem; consequently I had just about abandoned my efforts to place the order.”
“Fine business, Gus. And is Sobre Vista a rotten port at which to discharge?”
“It's vile, Cappy. It's an open roadstead and the vessel lies off-shore and discharges into lighters. About four days a week the surf is so high the lighters cannot lie alongside the ship or be run up on the beach without being ruined, and to complicate the situation they only have two or three lighters at the port. Labor is scarce, too, and the few cargadores a skipper can hire have a habit of working two days and staying drunk for the remainder of the week on the proceeds of those two days of labor. So you can see for yourself that discharge in Sobre Vista is very hard on the skipper's nerves, and that if he can work two days a week he's in luck. And when we deduct from those two days all the national holidays and holy days and saints' feast days that have to be duly celebrated, not to mention the three hundred and sixty-five days in the year the populace doesn't feel like exerting itself—well, Cappy, I couldn't give you anything worse than Sobre Vista if you paid me for it.”
“May the good Lord bless you, Augustus! Come down and do business with Skinner on the cargo. Get him to quote you a price f.o.b. ship's tackles at the mill dock and tell him you'll furnish the tonnage when the cargo is ready for delivery. There's no sense in worrying poor Skinner until his worries are due, and when I send a Blue Star schooner to load your cargo for Sobre Vista I'm going to have to fight him and my son-in-law, Matt Peasley. But leave it to me, Gus. I'll guarantee the tonnage.”
“This is certainly wonderful,” the grateful Redell observed. “Thank you, Cappy. What I'll do to those Peruvian customers of mine on price will be a shame and a disgrace. Are you going to stick me for any demurrage on the vessel, Cappy? Because if you are, I'll have to stick my customers in order to get out clean.”
“No demurrage, Gus, not a penny.”
“Bully! Then I'll stick my customers anyhow. It makes the profit all the greater, and since they expect to pay a reasonable demurrage I see no reason why I should disappoint them.”
When Redell had hung up Cappy summoned into his presence Captain Matt Peasley.
“Matt,” he queried, “what schooners have you got due at any one of our northern mills within the next thirty days?”
Matt Peasley pondered and counted on his big fingers. “The Tyee will be in from Valparaiso about that time,” he answered.