"Taken, Captain Scraggs. Write out an agreement and I'll sign it."
With the agreement in his pocket, Scraggs, followed by Gibney, left the cabin. "One hundred each to you an' Mac if you'll stay aboard the Chesapeake, steer her, an' help the Maggie out with what sail you can get on her," Scraggs promised.
"Take a long, runnin' jump at yourself, Scraggsy, old sorrowful. The best me an' Mac'll do is to help you cockbill the anchor, an' that'll cost you ten bucks for each of us—in advance." The artful fellow realized that Scraggs knew nothing whatever about a sailing ship and would have to depend upon The Squarehead for the information he required.
"All right. Here's your money," Scraggs replied and handed Mr. Gibney twenty dollars. He and Neils Halvorsen then went forward, got out the steel towing cable, and fastened a light rope to the end of it. The skiff floated off the ship at the end of the painter, so The Squarehead hauled it in, climbed down into the skiff, and made the light rope fast to a thwart; then, with Captain Scraggs paying out the hawser, Neils bent manfully to the oars and started to tow the steel cable back to the Maggie. Half way there, the weight of the cable dragging behind slowed The Squarehead up and eventually stopped him. Exerting all his strength he pulled and pulled, but the sole result of his efforts was to wear himself out, seeing which the Maggie's navigating officer set the little steamer in toward the perspiring Neils, while Captain Scraggs, Gibney, and McGuffey cheered lustily.
Suddenly an oar snapped. Instantly Neils unshipped the remaining oar, sprang to the stern, and attempted, by sculling, to keep the skiff's head up to the waves. But the weight of the cable whirled the little craft around, a wave rolled in over her counter, and half-filled her; the succeeding wave completed the job and rolled the skiff over and The Squarehead was forced to swim back to the Chesapeake. He climbed up the Jacob's ladder to face a storm of abuse from Captain Scraggs.
The cable was hauled back aboard with difficulty, owing to the submerged skiff at the end of it. Captain Scraggs and The Squarehead leaned over the Chesapeake's rail and tugged furiously, when the wreck came alongside, but all of their strength was unequal to the task of righting the little craft by hauling up on the light rope attached to her thwart.
"For ten dollars more each me an' Mac'll tail on to that rope an' do our best to right the skiff. After she's righted, I'll bail her out, borrow new oars from this here bark, an' help Neils row back to the Maggie with the cable," Mr. Gibney volunteered. "Cash in advance, as per usual."
"You're a pair of highway robbers, but I'll take you," Scraggs almost wailed, and paid out the money; whereupon Gibney and McGuffey "tailed" on to the rope and with raucous cries hauled away. As a result of their efforts, the thwart came away with the rope and the quartet sat down with exceeding abruptness on the hard pine deck of the Chesapeake.
"I had an idee that thwart would pull loose," Mr. Gibney remarked, as he got up and rubbed the seat of his dungarees. "If you'd had an ounce of sense, Scraggsy, you'd have saved twenty dollars an' rigged a watch-tackle, although even then the thwart would have come away, pullin' agin a vacuum that way. Well, you've lost a good skiff worth at least twenty-five dollars not to mention the two ash breezes that went with her. That helps some. What're you goin' to do now? Lay the Maggie alongside the bark? I wouldn't if I was you. The sea's a mite choppy an' if you bump the Maggie agin the bark she'll do one o' two things—stave in her topsides or bump that top-heavy deckload o' vegetables overboard. An' if that happens," he reminded Scraggs, "you'll be doin' your bookkeepin' with red ink for quite a spell."
"I ain't licked yet—not by a jugful," Scraggs snapped. "Halvorsen, haul down that signal halyard from the mizzenmast, take one end of it in your teeth, an' swim back to the Maggie with it. We'll fasten a heavier line to the signal halyard, bend the other end of the heavy line to the cable, an' haul the cable aboard with the Maggie's winch."