Pop-eyed with excitement and interest, B. McGuffey, Esquire, stood up and with a single twist shed his cap and coat. His shirts followed. Both he and Gibney were already minus their shoes and socks. To slip out of their faded dungarees was the work of an instant. Strapping their belts around their waists to hold up their drawers, the worthy pair stepped to the rail of the Maggie.
"Hey, there? Where you goin', Gib? I give you that clearance paper on condition that you was to tell me how to salvage that there bark without havin' to shift my cargo to get at the small boat."
"I'm just about to tell you, Scraggs. You don't touch a thing aboard the Maggie. You leave her out of it entirely. You just jump overboard, like me an' Mac will in a jiffy, swim over to the bark, climb aboard, and sail her in to San Francisco Bay. When you get there you drop anchor an' call it a day's work." He grinned broadly. "One o' these bright days, Scraggs, when me an' Mac is just wallerin' in salvage money, drop around to see us an' we'll give you a kick in the face. Farewell, you boobs," and he dove overboard.
"Ta-ta," McGuffey cried in his tantalizing falsetto voice, and followed his leader into the briny deep. As they came up and snorted, grampus-like, shaking the water out of their eyes, they glanced back at the Maggie and observed that Captain Scraggs was, for the third time that never-to-be-forgotten voyage, jumping on his hat.
"If I was that far gone in a habit," quoth Mr. McGuffey as he hauled up alongside Mr. Gibney, "I'll be switched if I wouldn't go bareheaded an' save expenses."
CHAPTER XII
The tide was still at the flood and the two adventurers made fast progress toward the Chesapeake. Choosing a favourable opportunity as the vessel dipped, they grasped her martingale, climbed up on the bowsprit, and ran along the bowsprit to the to'gallan'-fo'castle. On the deck below a dead man lay in the scuppers, and such a horrible stench pervaded the vessel that McGuffey was taken very ill and was forced to seek the rail.
"Scurvy or somethin'," Mr. Gibney announced quite calmly. "Here's the devil to pay. There should be chloride of lime in the mate's storeroom—I'll scatter some on these poor devils. Too close to port now to chuck 'em overboard. Anyhow, Bart, me an' you ain't doctors, nor yet coroners or undertakers, so you'd better skip along an' build a fire under the donkey aft. Matches in the galley, of course."
"I wish she was a schooner," McGuffey complained, edging over to the weather rail. "It'd be easier for us two to sail her then. I'm only a marine engineer, Gib, an' while I been goin' to sea long enough to pick up something about handlin' a vessel, still I'll get dizzy if I go aloft—an' I'm sure to get sick. You'll have to do all the high an' lofty tumblin'—an' how in blue blazes us two're goin' to sail a square-rigger into port is a mystery to me."