The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1921-12-16
CHAPTER Il-continued.

p
She did-with a crack that shook
the rigging and caused it to rattle like
| buckshots in a pan. A terrible cry
/ such a cry, indeed, as might burst
from the lips of a mother seeing her
! only child run down by the Limited
burst from poor Captain Scraggs. ''My
ship! My ship!" he howled. ''My
darling little Maggie! They've killed
you, they've killed you! The dirty
lubbersw
The succeeding wave lifted the Mag
| gle off the beach, carried her in some
fifty feet further, and deposited her
| gently on the sand. She heeled over
! to port a little and rested there as If
| she was very, very weary, nor could
all the threshing Of her screw in re-
verse haul her off again. The surf,
dashing in under her fantail, had more
| power than McGuffey's engines, and,
foot by foot, the Maggie proceeded to
dig herself in. Mr.. Gibney listened
| for five minutes to the uproar that
rose from the bowels Of the little
steamer before he whistled up Mr..
McGuffey.
"Kill her, kill her." he ordered.
"Your wheel will bite into the sand
first thing you know, and tear the
stern off her. You're shakin' the old
| girl to pieces"
McGuffey killed his engine, banked
| his fires, and came up on deck, wiping
his anxious face with a fearfully filthy
sweat rag. At the same time Scraggs
and Neils Halvorsen came crawling
aft over the deckload and when they
reached the clear space around the
pilot house, Captain Scraggs threw his
brown derby on the deck and leaped
upon it until, his rage abating ulti-
mately, no power on earth, in the air,
or under the sea, could possibly have
rehabilitated it and rendered it fit for
further wear, even by Captain Scraggs.
This petulant practice of jumping on
his hat was q habit with Scraggs
whenever anything annoyed him par
ticularly and was always infallible evil
dence that a simple declarative SEN
| tence had stuck in his throat.
"Weli, old whirling dervish," Mr..
Gibney demanded calmly when Scraggs
paused for lack of breath to continue
his dance, what about it? We're up
Salt Creek without paddle; the devil
to pay and no pitch hot"
"McGuffey's fred" Captain Scraggs
screeched.
"Come, come, Scraggsy, old tarpot,"
Mr.. Gibney soothed. "This amt no
time for fghtin'. Thinkin' an actin
is all that saves the Maggie now"
But Captain Scraggs was beyond
reason. "McGuffey's fired! McGuf-
fey's fired % he reiterated. "The dirty
rotten wharf rat! Call yourself an
engineer" he continued witheringly
"As an engineer you're bowling sue
cess at shoemakin', you slob. I'll fix
your clock for you, my hearty. I'll
have your ticket took away from you,
an that's no Chinaman's dream,
nuther."
"It's all my fault runnin' by dead
reckonin'," the honest Gibney pro-
tested. "Mac amt to fault. The en-
CINE room telegraph busted an he got
the wrong signal"
"It's his business to see to it that
he's got an engine room telegraph that
won't bust"
"You dog!" McGuffey roared and
sprang at the skipper, who leaped
nimbly up the little ladder to the top
of the pilot house and stood prepared
to kick Mr.. McGuffey in the face
should that worthy venture up after
him. 81 can't persuade you to git me
nothin' that ought to have. I'm tired
workin with junk an scraps an cop
per wire and pieces o. string. I'm
through"
you're right-you're through, be-
cause you're f1redp' Scraggs shrieked
in insane rage sect, off my ship, you
maritime impostor, or I'll take pistol
to you. Overheard with you, you
greasy, Anticipated bounder! You're
rotten, understand? Rotten! Rotten !!
Rotten"
"You owe me eight dollars an six
bits, Scraggs," Mr.. McGuffey reminded
his owner calmly. "Chuck down the
spondulicks an TIL get off your ship"
Captain Scraggs was beyond reason,
so ne tossed the money down to the
engineer snow git" he commanded.
Without further ado, Mr.. McGuffey
| started across the deckload to the
] fo'castle head Scraggs could not see
him but he could hear him-so he
| pelted the engineer with potatoes, cab
hage heads and onions, the vegetables
| descending about the honest McGuffey
in veritable barrage. Even in the
| darkness several of these missiles took
| effect.
| Upon reaching the very apex of the
Maggie's bow, Mr.. McGuffey turned
and hurled promise ints fhe dark
ness: "If we ever meet again,
Scraggs, I'll make Mrs. Scraggs wild
ow. Paste that in your hat-when
you get a new one."
The Maggie was resting easily on
the beach, with the broken water from
the long lazy combers surging well
up above her water line. At most,
six feet of water awaited the engineer,
who stood, peering shoreward and lis
tening intently, oblivious to the stray
| missiles which whizzed past. Present
ly, from out of the fog, he heard a
grinding, metallic sound and through
sudden rift in the fog caught 3