“Matt,” he said plaintively.  “I want you to do the old man a favor, if you will.  You heard about our Amelia Ricks, didn’t you?  Well, she’s in dry dock at Hunters Point now, and they’ll have the dock pumped out in two hours so we can see what her bottom looks like.  I know she’s ripped out clear up to the garboards and probably hogged, and I can hardly wait to make sure.  The marine surveyor for the Underwriters will go down this afternoon to look her over, and then he’ll take a day to present his long, typewritten report—­and I can’t wait that long.  Will you skip down to Crowley’s boathouse, hire a launch and charge it to us, and go down to see the Amelia?  She’ll be shored up by the time you get down there.  Make a good quick examination of the damage and hurry back so I can talk it over with you.  I go a heap on your judgment, Matt.”

“I’ll start right away, sir,” Matt promised, glad of any opportunity to favor Cappy.

Two hours later, on his way back to the Mission Street bulkhead, he passed, in Mission Bay, a huge, rusty red box of a steel freighter, swinging at anchor.  Under ordinary weather conditions Matt would have paid no attention to her; but, as has already been stated, the northwest trades were blowing a gale and had kicked up a sea; hence the steamer was rolling freely at her anchorage, and as the launch bobbed by to windward of her she rolled far over to leeward—­and Matt saw something that challenged his immediate attention and provoked his profound disgust.  The sides of the vessel below the water line were incrusted with barnacles and eelgrass fully six inches thick!

No skipper that ever set foot on a bridge could pass that scaly hulk unmoved.  Matt Peasley said uncomplimentary things about the owners of the vessel and directed the launchman to pass in under her stern, in order that he might read her name.  She proved to be the Narcissus, of London.

He stood in the stern of the launch, staring thoughtfully after the Narcissus, and before his mind there floated that vision of the barnacles and eelgrass, infallible evidence that the years had been long since the Narcissus had been hauled out.

“Do you know how long that steamer has lain there?” he queried of the launchman.

“I been runnin’ launches to and from Hunters Point for seven years an’ she was there when I come on the job,” the latter answered.

“It’s no place for a good ship,” Matt Peasley murmured musingly.  “She ought to be out on the dark blue, loaded and earning good money for her owners.  I must find out why she isn’t doing it.”

Having rendered a meticulous report to Cappy on the condition of the Amelia Ricks, Matt, his brain still filled with thoughts of that lonely big steamer swinging neglected in Mission Bay among the rotting oyster boats and old clipper ships waiting to be converted into coal hulks, proceeded to the Merchants’ Exchange where Lloyds’ Register soon put him in possession of the following information: