“Well I’m damned, Hank, if you don’t take the cake. You do indeed, you do indeed, you take the cake with the cherry topknot. You come here to me in the temple, so to say, of business propositions—”

“That’s what I’m bringing you,” said Hank. “A business proposition on the hook, warranted sound, free from scab—it’s a buffalo.”

“Trot out your buffalo,” said Tyrebuck.

“Well, it’s this way,” said Hank. “You lend me the Wear Jack. If she busts up and never comes back, you get your insurance, don’t you? If we bring her back with the Dutchman on board, she’s a hero and you have the laugh over the whole waterside. Even if we don’t collar the Dutchman and come back, she’ll have proved herself seaworthy and I’ll give her a certificate all27 round the town that’ll sell her for you in two hours.”

27

“Gosh!” groaned Tyrebuck, “why didn’t I insure her for twenty thousand?” He wallowed in thought for a moment, then he said:

“Hank.”

“Yep?”

“D’you want a partnership in a shipping business?”

“Nope.”

“Well, if you do, I’ll take you on. I will, sure. Yes, you can have the loan of her. God help the Dutchman if you’re after him. Take her down south, take her to blazes, take her anywhere you like and now get out of my office for I’m busy. One moment, here’s my card, there’s a watchman on board her, show him this and he’ll let you go over her and I’ll send you a letter to-night confirming the loan.”

Outside Hank took George’s arm. “Say, Bud, you’re the right sort.”

“How so?” asked George.

“I don’t believe there’s another man in ’Frisco that would have gone in with me on this, not on that specification anyhow. D’y’ know the Wear Jack was built in ’sixty-seven.”

“What do you mean by ’sixty-seven?”

“Three years before the first German-French war. It’s on the shipwright’s plate on the after gratings. ‘Duncan Matheson, 1867,’ that’s her28 birth certificate. One of the first yacht-building firms to start in ’Frisco.”

28

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