“Do you speak German, captain?” Cappy queried excitedly.
“I do not, sir—more's the pity. But the four quartermasters speak fair English, and I have engaged two good German-American mates who speak German. Reardon has shipped German-American engineers and some of his coal passers and firemen speak fair English. I've got two Native Son Chinamen in the galley and a Cockney steward. We'll get along.”
“And a rattling fine idea, too,” Cappy Ricks declared warmly. “Mike, my boy, you're a wonder. That's the spirit. Always keep down the overhead, Matt. That's what eats up the dividends.”
“Well, I wouldn't agree to it if the Narcissus wasn't going to be engaged in neutral trade, or if she was carrying munitions of war to the Allies,” Matt declared. “I'd be afraid some of Mike's Germans might blow up the ship.”
“Believe me,” quoth Michael J. Murphy, “if she was engaged in freighting munitions to England, it'd be a smart German that would get a chance to blow her up. I think I'd scuttle her myself first.”
“Well, Mike, if your courage failed you,” Cappy Ricks replied laughingly, “I think we could safely leave the job to Terence Reardon.”
CHAPTER IV
On that first voyage the Narcissus carried general cargo to northern ports on the West Coast. Then she dropped down to a nitrate port and loaded nitrate for New York, and about the time she passed through the Panama Canal the Blue Star Navigation Company wired its New York agent to provide some neutral business for her next voyage. Freights were soaring by this time, due to the scarcity of the foreign bottoms which formerly had carried Uncle Sam's goods to market, and Cappy Ricks and Matt Peasley knew the rates would increase from day to day, and that in consequence their New York agents would experience not the slightest difficulty in placing her—hence they delayed as long as they could placing her on the market.