Matt Peasley, the Yankee, came to life at that. “Has that been confiscated, too?” he queried.
“No, captain. However, we have confiscated that German crew of yours--”
“--and loaned you a crew of British seamen from the tramp _Surrey Maid_. The _Scharnhorst_ torpedoed her off the coast of Chile, and we found her crew on board one of the German transports when we captured them after the fleet was destroyed. You're all fixed up, from skipper to cabin boy--”
“Wireless operator, too?” Matt Peasley cried.
The consul nodded. “He's got a steady job,” the youthful president declared, and turned to Cappy Ricks for confirmation of this edict. But Cappy, the pious old codger, had bowed his head on his breast and they heard him mutter:
“O Lord, I thank Thee! All unworthy as I am, Lord, thou loadest me with favors--including a wireless plant, free gratis!”
Long after the British consul had departed Cappy Ricks sat alone in his office, dozing. Presently he roused and rang for Mr. Skinner.
“Skinner,” he said, “Matt reports that the late Riggins made an allotment of his wages to his wife when he shipped aboard the _Narcissus_?”
“Riggins's wages hereafter shall constitute a charge against the _Narcissus_ while Mrs. Riggins lives and while the Blue Star Navigation Company can afford to give up seventy dollars every month. Attend to it, Skinner. Another thing, Skinner.”
“We ought to do something for Murphy and Reardon. Now then, Skinner, you've never had a chance to be a sport heretofore, but you're a stockholder in the Blue Star Navigation Company now, and as such I feel that I should not use my position, as owner of a controlling interest in the stock of the company, to give away the property of the company in an arbitrary fashion. So I'm going to leave it up to you, Skinner, to suggest what we shall do for them. I believe you will agree with me that we should do something very handsome by those two boys.”
“Quite so, sir, quite so. Well, to start off with, Mr. Ricks, I think we ought to pay their hospital bills, if any. Then I think we ought to give each of them a handsome gold watch, suitably engraved and with a small blue star--sapphires, you know--set in the front of the case.”
“You feel that would about fill the bill, eh, Skinner?”