“Do you mean you’ll give the Oriental Steamship Company ten thousand dollars for a sixty-day option?”

“I do; and I’ll pay for the vessel as I raise the remainder of the money.  Ten thousand dollars down for the option, to apply on the purchase price, of course, if the deal goes through, and to be forfeited to you if I fail to make the next payment on time.”

“What will the next payment be?” the cautious MacCandless demanded.

“Twenty thousand dollars a month, with interest at six per cent. in deferred payments.  You might as well be earning six per cent. on her as have her rusting holes in her bottom down there in Mission Bay.  As she lies, you’re losing at least six per cent. interest on her.”

“There’s reason in that,” MacCandless answered thoughtfully.  “You to insure the vessel as our interest may appear, bill of sale in escrow; and if you default for more than thirty days on any payment before we have received fifty per cent. of the purchase price you lose out and we get our ship back.”

“Sharp business, but I’ll take it, Mr. MacCandless.  After I’ve paid half the money I can mortgage her for the remainder and get out from under your clutches.  Put the buck up to your directors, get their approval to the option and contract of sale, notify me, and I’ll be right up with a certified check for ten thousand dollars.”  And, without giving MacCandless time to answer, Matt took his departure.

“If I talked ten minutes with that man,” he soliloquized, “he’d have the number of my mess.  He’d realize what a piker I was and terminate the interview.  But—­I—­think he’ll meet my terms, because he sees I’m pretty young and inexperienced, and he figures he’ll make ten or twenty thousand dollars out of me before I discover I’m a rotten promoter.  And, at that, his is better than an even-money bet!”

At five o’clock that same day MacCandless telephoned.

“I have called a special meeting of our directors, Captain Peasley,” he announced, “and put your proposition up to them.  They have agreed to it, and if you will be at my office at ten o’clock to-morrow I think we can do business.”

“I think so,” Matt answered.  “I’ll be there.”

He hung up, reached for a telegraph blank and wrote the following message: 

San Francisco, July 28, 1914.

  Terence Reardon,
    Chief Engineer, S. S. Arab,
      Port Costa, California.

Have bought Narcissus.  Offer you one hundred seventy-five a month quit Arab now and supervise installation new crank shaft, retubing condensers, and so on; permanent job as chief.  Do you accept?  Answer immediately.

                         Pacificshipping company,
                                Matthew Peasley, President.

Having dispatched this message, Matt Peasley closed down his desk, strolled round to the Blue Star Navigation Company’s offices, and picked up his newly acquired father-in-law.  On their way home in Cappy’s carriage the old gentleman, apropos of the afternoon press dispatches from Europe, remarked that the situation abroad was anything but encouraging.