“Why, you’ll make a nice little fee on those ore boats,” he said.  “I suppose it’s a time charter.”

“Four years,” Mr. Hayes replied, and smiled fatly at the thought of his income.  “Of course I’d make a larger commission if the freight rate was figured on a tonnage basis; but on long charters, like these I mention, the ships are rented at a flat rate a day or month.  Say, for instance, I negotiate these charters at the rate of four hundred dollars a day, or eight hundred dollars a day for the two boats.  Two and a half per cent. of eight hundred dollars is twenty dollars a day, which I will earn as commission every day for the next four years that the vessels are not in dry dock or laid up for repairs.”

“And you probably will earn that by one day of labor,” Matt Peasley murmured admiringly—­“perhaps one hour of actual labor!”

Mr. Hayes smiled again his fat smile.  He shrugged.

“That’s business,” be said carelessly.  “An ounce of promotion is worth a ton of horse power.”

“Well, I should say so, Mr. Hayes!  But you’ll have quite a search to find an ore boat on the Pacific Coast.  There are some coal boats running to Coos Bay, but they’re hardly big enough; and then I suppose they’re kept pretty busy in the coal trade, aren’t they?  It seems to me that what you need for your business would be two of those big steel ore vessels, with their engines astern—­the kind they use on the Great Lakes.”

“That is exactly why I am going to San Francisco, Mr. Peasley.  There are on this Coast two ships such as you describe—­sister ships and just what the doctor ordered.”

“What are their names?”

“The Lion and the Unicorn.”

Matt Peasley paused, with a forkful of provender halfway to his mouth.  The S.S.  Lion, eh?  Why, that was one of Cappy Ricks’ vessels!  He remembered passing her off Cape Flattery once and seeing the Blue Star house flag fluttering at the fore.

“Were they Lake boats originally?” he queried.

Mr. Hayes nodded.

“What are they doing out here?”

“Right after the San Francisco fire, when fir lumber jumped from a twelve-dollar base to twenty-five, lumber freights soared accordingly,” Hayes explained.  “Vessels that had been making a little money at four dollars a thousand feet, from Oregon and Washington ports to San Francisco, were enabled to get ten dollars; and anything that would float was hauled out of the bone yard and put to work.  Old Man Ricks, of the Blue Star Navigation Company, was the first to see the handwriting on the wall; so he sneaked East and bought the Lion and the Unicorn.  It was just the old cuss’s luck to have a lot of cash on hand; and he bought them cheap, loaded them with general cargo in New York, and paid a nice dividend on them on their very first voyage under the Blue Star flag.  When he got them on the Coast he put them into the lumber trade and they paid for themselves within a year.