“Huh! Makes me sick to talk about it; but the skipper of the Taurus was there at the time and he tells me that, though the Valkyrie was pretty well down by the stern, her bulkheads were holding and she wouldn't have sunk if those blamed Frenchmen, fearful that the German fleet was coming back after her, hadn't gone aboard and opened her sea cocks! Yes, sir. Rather than risk having her recaptured, they opened her sea cocks and sunk her! And, at that, they didn't have sense enough to run her out to deep water. No! They had to do the trick as she lay at anchor; and there she lies still, a menace to navigation and a perennial reminder to those Papeete Frenchmen that he who acts in haste will repent at leisure.”
To this outburst Mr. Skinner made some perfunctory remark, attributing the situation to a lack of efficiency, while Matt Peasley went back to his office and grieved as he reflected on the corrosive action of salt water on those fine, seven-year-old engines.
CHAPTER XXXIV
Time passed. Mr. Skinner developed a pallor and irritability that bespoke all too truly an attack of nerves, from overwork, and sore against his will was hustled off to Honolulu for a rest while Cappy Ricks had the audacity to take charge of the lumber business. Whereupon Mr. J. Augustus Redell, of the West Coast Trading Company, discovered the unprotected condition of the Ricks Lumber & Logging Company and promptly, in sheer wanton deviltry, proceeded to sew Cappy Ricks up on an order for a million grape stakes.
A word here regarding the said J. Augustus Redell. He was a blithe, joyous creature, still in the sunny thirties, and what he didn't know about the lumber business—particularly the marketing of lumber products—could be tucked into anybody's eyes without impairing their eyesight. Mr. Redell had fought his way up from office boy with the Black Butte Lumber Company to lumber broker with offices of his own. He had owned a retail yard in which business he had gone “bust” for more money than the world appeared to contain. But he had fought his way back and paid a hundred cents on the dollar, including some hundred and forty thousand dollars he had owed the Ricks mills at the time of his collapse. Because he was young and fine and good-natured and brave and brilliant, Cappy had always admired J. Augustus Redell, but after the latter had so splendidly re-established his credit and formed a partnership with a Peruvian gentleman, one Senor Luiz Almeida, known locally as Live Wire Luiz, Cappy found that he had for the genial J. Augustus an admiration that amounted to affection. The West Coast Trading Company, under which title Live Wire Luiz and J. Augustus Redell did a lumber brokerage business with Mexico, Central American and South American countries principally, had Cappy Ricks' entire confidence, although he would have died rather than admit this. Live Wire Luiz he ignored and always dismissed as a factor in the affairs of that company, but whenever Redell had a deal on that was too heavy for his financial sinews, Cappy could always be depended upon to lend a helping hand. On his part, Redell revered Cappy Ricks as only an idealistic and naturally lovable rascal of a boy can revere an idealistic and lovable old man. To J. Augustus Redell little, old, naive, whimsical, gentle, terrible, brilliant, cunning, generous, altruistic, prudent, youthful old Cappy Ricks was a joy forever. With the impishness of his tender years, Mr. Redell could conceive of no greater joy than picking on Cappy Ricks just to see the latter fight back.
Quite early in their friendship, the astute Redell discovered a rift in Cappy's armor—two rifts, in fact. The first was that Cappy feared and loathed old age and fiercely resented even the most shadowy intimation that with age he was, to employ a sporting phrase, “losing his punch.” The second weakness that lay exposed to Redell was Cappy's passion for wringing a profit, by ingenious means, from apparently barren soil where no profit had ever hitherto burgeoned. At heart Cappy was a speculator; only the fact that he was a prudent and careful speculator had conduced to enrich him rather than impoverish him.
Now, Cappy was fully convinced, from optical evidence, that J. Augustus Redell was a gambler. He admired Redell's genius for business, the soundness of his decisions, the alertness of his mind and the brilliance of his financial coups, but—he deprecated the younger man's daring. Cappy called it recklessness. By degrees the old gentleman had come to assume a proprietary interest in Gus Redell and the latter's affairs, for the younger man frequently sought counsel from Cappy and not infrequently, a loan! Cappy knew his young friend to be the soul of manly honor, but—he was young! Ah, yes! He was young. Ergo, he was foolish. True, his foolishness had not as yet been discovered, but Cappy was certain it would come to the surface sooner or later. The boy was reckless—a gambler. Cappy abhorred gambling. He never gambled. Occasionally he speculated! What more natural, therefore, than that little Cappy should presently arrogate to himself the privilege of stabbing young J. Augustus to the vitals from time to time, just to impress upon the boy the knowledge that this is a hard, cold, cruel world with a great many bad men in it!
Nothing could possibly have delighted Redell more. Whenever Cappy stabbed him, forthwith he set about to stab Cappy in return, and thus had developed a joyous business feud. These best of friends spent an hour and a half daily, at luncheon, “picking” on each other, telling tales on each other, eternally “joshing” for the edification of a coterie of their lumber and shipping friends who always lunched in a private dining room at the Commercial Club and who were known within that organization as the Bilgewater Club.