“Dammit!” Cappy soliloquized bitterly. “I can't eat lunch now. One bite would choke me.”
CHAPTER XXXVI
And he turned toward the entrance to the Merchants' Exchange, being minded to enter a telephone booth and notify the Bilgewater Club he would not be present that day. As he walked through the gate into the Exchange, however, he was accosted by a heavy, florid-faced man carrying a thick woolen watch coat over his arm. This individual was Captain Aaron Porter, one of the San Francisco bar pilots, and he greeted Cappy with a respectful query after the old gentleman's health.
“I don't feel very well,” Cappy replied wearily. “I'm getting old, captain—getting old.”
Then he noted the watch coat the pilot was carrying and decided subconsciously that there could be no connection between it and the sultry August weather prevailing at that moment; consequently it informed the observant Cappy, as plainly as if it had a tongue and had spoken, that Captain Aaron Porter expected shortly to be exposed to the chill northwest winds outside as he piloted a vessel to sea. In the manufacture of sheer inane conversation, therefore, Cappy tugged the coat and said:
“Going to take a ship out this afternoon, captain?”
“Yes, sir. I'll be responsible for the Moana until we cross the Potato Patch—”
“The Moana!” Cappy cried, and pulled out his watch. “You'd better be stepping lively, then. She sails at one, and you have twenty minutes to get to Greenwich Street Pier.”