“I’m from blue water,” Matt replied pleasantly.  “You’re in the shipping business, I take it.”

“Almost—­I’m a ship, freight and marine insurance broker.”  And the stranger handed over a calling card bearing the name of Mr. Allan Hayes.  “I’m from Seattle.”

“Peasley is my name, Mr. Hayes,” Matt answered heartily, glad of this chance acquaintance with a man with whom he could converse on a subject of mutual interest.  “I haven’t any post-office address,” he added whimsically.

“Going over to Columbia River to join your ship, I daresay,” Mr. Hayes suggested.

“No, sir.  I’m bound for San Francisco, to get a job in steam and work up to a captaincy.”

“Wherein you show commendable wisdom, Mr. Peasley,” the broker answered.  “A man can get so far in a windjammer—­a hundred a month in the little coasting schooners and a hundred and twenty-five in the big vessels running foreign—­and there he sticks.  In steam schooners a good man can command two hundred dollars a month, with a chance for promotion into a big freighter, for the reason that in steam one has more opportunity to show the stuff that’s in one.”

“How far are you going?” Matt demanded.

“I’m bound for San Francisco too.”

“Good!” Matt replied, for, like most boys, he was a gregarious animal, and Mr. Hayes seemed to be a pleasant, affable gentleman.  “I suppose you know most of the steam vessels on this coast?” he continued, anxious to turn the conversation into channels that might be productive of information valuable to him in his new line of endeavor.

Mr. Hayes nodded.  “I have to,” he said, “if I’m to do any business negotiating charters; in fact, I’m bound to San Francisco now to charter two steamers.”

“Freight or passenger?”

“Freight.  There’s nothing for a broker in a passenger vessel.  I’m scouting for two boats for the Mannheim people.  You’ve heard of them, of course.  They own tremendous copper mines in Alaska, but they can’t seem to get the right kind of flux to smelt their ore up there; so they’re going to freight it down to their smelter in Tacoma.”

“I see.  But how do you work the game to pay your office rent?”

“Why, that’s very simple, Mr. Peasley.  Their traffic manager merely calls me up and tells me to find two ore freighters for him.  He doesn’t know where to look for them, but he knows I do, and that it will not cost him anything to engage me to find them for him.  Well, I locate the vessels and when I come to terms with the owners, and those terms are satisfactory to my clients, I close the charter and the vessel owners pay me a commission of two and a half per cent. on all the freight money earned under the charter.  A shipowner generally is glad to pay a broker a commission for digging him up business for his ships—­particularly when freights are dull.”

Matt Peasley nodded his comprehension and did some quick mental arithmetic.