Matt had a horrifying inspiration.  “I know what’s wrong,” he cried bitterly.  “He thinks I’m so old I ought to be retired, and that telegram is in the nature of a hint that a letter, asking for my resignation, is on the way now.”

“Why—­why—­why?” Mr. Murphy stuttered, “did you send him the picture of Methuselah himself?  Heaven’s sake, skipper, there’s a happy medium, you know.  I meant for you to pick yourself out a man of about fifty-five, and here you’ve slipped him a patriarch of ninety.  Sarcasm!  I should say so.”

They stared at each other a few seconds; then Mr. Murphy had an equally disturbing inspiration.

“By Neptune!” he suggested, “maybe you sent him the picture of somebody he knows!”

“Well, in that case, Mike, I’m not going to hang on the hook of suspicion.  Maybe I can find out whose picture I sent,” and away Matt went up town to the photograph gallery.  When he returned ten minutes later Mr. Murphy, sighting him a block in the offing, knew the skipper of the barkentine Retriever for a broken man!  Beyond doubt he had shipped a full cargo of grief.

“Well?” he queried as Matt hove alongside.  “Did you find out?”

Matt nodded gloomily.

“Who?” Mr. Murphy demanded peremptorily.

“Cappy Ricks!” Matt almost wailed.

“No!” Mr. Murphy roared.

“Yes!  The old scoundrel was up here three years ago, visiting this mill—­you know, Mike, he owns it—­and the Retriever was here loading at the time.  He and Captain Kendall were close friends, and they went over to that photograph shop, had their pictures taken and swapped—­and like a poor, helpless, luckless boob I had to come along and buy the sample picture the photographer hung in his case.  It never occurred to me to ask questions—­and I might have known nobody but a prominent citizen ever gets into a show-case—­”

“Glory, glory, hallelujah,” Mr. Murphy crooned in a deep, chain-locker voice, and fled from the skipper’s wrath.

An hour later, in the privacy of his cabin, Matt Peasley took his pen in hand and wrote to Cappy Ricks: 

  Mr. Alden P. Ricks,
    Dear Sir:—­

I herewith tender my resignation as master of the barkentine Retriever, same to take effect on my return from Sydney—­or before I sail, if you desire.  If I do not hear from you before I sail I shall assume that it will be all right to quit when I get back from Australia.

I will not be twenty-three years old until the Fourth of July.  I was afraid you wouldn’t trust me with a big ship like the Retriever if you knew; so I sent you a photograph I purchased for fifty cents from the local photographer.  I guess that’s all—­except that you couldn’t find a better man to take my place than Mr. Murphy.  He has had the experience.

                                              Yours truly,
                                                Matt Peasley.