The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1921-11-02
The Green Pea Pirates
 By Peter B. Kyne

at public auction conducted by the | United States marshal, following her | capture as she sneaked into San load of Chinamen and opium from Ensenada. She had cost him fifteen hundred hard earned dollars. ScraggS PhineaS P. Scraggs, to employ his full name-was precisely | the kind of man one might expect to | own and operate the Maggie Rat faced, snaggle-toOthed and furtive, | with a low cunning that sometimes passed for great ntelligence, Scraggs' | character is best described in a home ! ly American word. He was "ornery." A native of San Francisco. he had 1 grown up around the docks and had developed from meSsboy on a river | steamer to master of bay and river steamboats, although 1t is not of rec 1 ord that he ever commanded such a craft. Despite his ticket there was | none so foolish as to trust him with | one-a condition of affairs which had
 tended to sour a disposition not nat mand a steamboat gradually had de- | veloped into an obsession. Result | the fast and commodious s. s. Mag | gie,'' as the United States marshal
 had had the audacity to advertise l her.
 In the beginning, Captain Scraggs | had planned to do bay, and river tow
 ing with the Maggie. Alas! The
  l temp4ed to tow a heavily laden barge up river, a light fog had come down,
 necessitating the frequent blowing of l the whistle. Following the sixth long l blast, MT. McGuffey had whistled Scraggs the engine-room howler; i swearing horribly, he had demanded
 to be informed why in this and that | the skipper didn't leave that dod-
 gasted whistle alone. It was using | Up his steam faster than he could 1 manufacture it. Thereafter, Scraggs l the honest McGuffey had once more | succeeded in conserving sufficient | steam to crawl up river, the tide had
 turned and the Maggie could not | few new tubes in the boiler would do
 the trick, but on the other hand, MT. | Gibney pointed out that the old craft | was practically punk aft and a stiff
 tow would jerk the tail off the old l girl. In despair. therefore Captain l Scraggs had abandoned bay and river l towing and was prepared to jump | overheard and end all, when an op- | portunity offered for the freighting | of graden truck and dairy produce | from Halfmoon bay to San Fran | cisco.
 But now difficulty arose The new run was an "outside" one-salt water all the way. Under the ruling of the inspectors, the Maggie would | be running coastwise the instant she | engaged in the green-pea and string
 bean trade, and Captain Scraggs' H | cense provided for no such contin- | gency. His ticket entitled him to act | as master on the waters of San Fran | cisco bay and the waters tributary | thereto, and although Scraggs argued
 that the Pacific ocean constituted wa i ters tributary thereto" if he under
 stood the English language, the in- | spectors were obdurate. What if the
 distance was less than 25 miles? they pointed out. The voyage was unde-
 niably coastwise and carried with it | all the risk of wind and wave. And | in order to impress upon Captain
 Scraggs the weight of their authority,
 the inspeet9rs e sqsspended for ad six | river license for having dared to ne gotiate two coastwise voyages with | out consulting them. Furthermore, | they warned him that the next time | he did it they would condemn the fast and commodious Maggie.
 In this extremity, Fate had sent to
 Captain Scraggs a large, imposing,
 capable, but socially indifferent per
 son who responded to the name of
 Adelbert P. Gibney. Mir Gibney had spent part of an adventurous life in the United States navy, where he had applied himself and acquired a fair
 smatterfng of navigation. Prior to en-
 tering the navy he had been a fore mast hand in clipper ships and had held a second mates berth. Follow
 ing his discharge from the navy he
 had sailed coastwise on steam schoon-
 CTS, and after attending a navigation
 
 a license as chief mate of steam, any ! ocean and any tonnage.
 Unfortunately for MT. Gibney, he had failing. Most of us have. The
 most genial fellow in the world, he
 was cursed with too much brains and
 imagination and a thirst which re-
 quired quenching around pay day.
 Also. he had that beastly habit of
 command which is inseparable from
 a born leader; when he held a first
 mates berth, he was wont to try to
 run the ship and, on occasions,
 ladle out suggestions to his skipper.
 Thus. in time, he acquired a reputa- tion for being unreliable and a wind
 bag, with the result that shippers were chary of engaging him. Not to be too proliX, at the time Captain Scraggs made the disheartening dis } covery that he had to have a skipper
 for the Maggie, MT. Gibney found ! himself reduced to the alternative of longshore work or a fo'cast1e berth in windpamner bound for blue water.
 With alarcity, therefore, MT. Gib- ney had accepted Scraaggs' offer of , s75 a month-"and found''-to skip per the Maggie on her coastwise run. As first mate of steam he had no { difficulty inducing the inspectors to . l grant him a license to skipper such an abandoned craft as the Maggie, and accordingly he hung up his tick ct in her pilot house and was registered as her master, albeit, under a gen
 tleman's agreement with Scraggs ihe , was not to claim the title of captain and was known to the world as the Maggie's first mate. second mate
 third mate, quartermaster, purser 7 and freight clerk One Neils Halvor-
 sen a solemn Swede with a placid bo- vine disposition, constituted the fo'-
 castle hands, while Bart McGuffey a , wastrel of the Gibney type but slow
 witted, reigned supreme in the engine room. Also his case resembled that of MT. Gibney in that McGuffey's . job on the Maggie was the first he
 had had in six months and he treas , ured it accordingly. For this req : son he and Gibney had been inclined . to take considerable slack from Cap f tain Scraggs until McGuffey discov- ' cred that, in all probability, no en- , glneer in the world, except himself would have the courage to trust him. . self within range of the Maggie
 boilers, and, consequently. he had
 Captain Scraggs more or less at his mercy. Upon imparting this suspi-