A month and Cappy Ricks remained minus his port captain; Mr. Skinner was still strongly entrenched in his job as general manager.  It was a hard hand to beat, for the fact of the matter was that Cappy Ricks simply could not afford to dispense with Mr. Skinner.  The man was too honest, too conscientious, too industrious, too brilliant, too efficient, not to be reckoned with.  To part with Skinner was like parting with a dividend-producing gold mine; it was equivalent to unloading on Cappy’s shoulders again the burden of work and worry that would have killed him ten years ago had he not surrendered it to Skinner, who handled it as a juggler handles nine balls.  Moreover, Skinner knew all of the business secrets of the Ricks Lumber and Logging Company and the Blue Star Navigation Company—­why, he was an integral part of the business; and, lastly, Cappy was fond of the man.

Skinner had come to him as office boy at the tender age of ten—­and that was twenty-five years before.  A daily association for twenty-five years would make a human being like Cappy fond of the devil himself; and, barring the fact that he was cold-blooded, Skinner was a fairly likeable chap, and devoted, body and soul to Cappy Ricks.  The longer Cappy pondered the thought of asserting his authority as boss and defying Skinner, the more impossible the alternative became.  Also the longer he thought of having Matt Peasley kept out of the business by Skinner, the higher rose his gorge, for Cappy had yearned for a son like Matt Peasley and been denied.  Now when he had planned successfully to do the next best thing and have Matt for a son-in-law, to be blocked by Skinner was unbearable.  All Cappy could do was to search vainly for an “out,” and in the interim, whenever he met Matt Peasley at his home, he carefully avoided all reference to Matt’s future in the Blue Star employ for which, by the way, Matt was eternally grateful.  He did not care to talk business with Cappy for a month as yet.  He was too happy with Cappy’s daughter.

Another month passed.  Cappy grew thin and lost his relish for his food.  Then Florence, being a woman, began to see, looming out of the rose-tinted mist of her happy dreams, a huge interrogation mark.

She wondered what her father intended doing for her future husband; and since she was accustomed to bossing her parent she spoke to Cappy about it, thereby increasing his mental agony.

About the same time Matt Peasley commenced to wonder also, but forbore to mention the subject to Cappy.  Instead, he went down to the Red Stack people and got himself a job skippering a tug; and great was his joy thereat, for the wages were fully as good as he had enjoyed on the Quickstep, and he was enabled to spend nearly every night in port.  The two months of idleness, albeit the happiest he had ever known, had commenced to pall on him, and he wanted to be up and doing once more.  Also, being a man, he sensed something of the embarrassment of Cappy’s