“I could get away with your job if I had the chance, sir,” Matt declared, almost impudently.

“There she blows!” the Old Man declared.  “Bless me, if you’re not a Native Son!  Nobody but a Native Son would be that fresh.  I suppose this is your second voyage, you puling baby?”

Matt Peasley’s dander was up instantly.

“I’m sailor enough to know my way alow or aloft in any weather, sir,” he retorted.

The captain saw his opening and struck.

“What’s the ring-tail?” he demanded.

“It’s a studdin’-s’l on the gaff of a fore-an’-aft, sail, sir.  You haven’t got one on the Retriever, sir.”

“Huh!  You’ve been reading W. Clark Russell’s sea yarns,” the skipper charged.  “He was quite a pen-an’-paper sailor when it came to square-rigged ships, but he didn’t have much to say about six-masted schooners.  You see, they didn’t build them in his day.  Now then, son, name the sticks on a six-legged schooner, and be sure and name ’em right.”

“Fore, main, mizzen, spanker, jigger and driver, sir,” Matt fired back at him.

“Bully for you, my son.  You’re the third mate.  Cappy Ricks allows me the luxury of a third mate whenever I run across a young fellow that appears to be worth a whoop in hell, so grab your duds, and go aft, and don’t bring any cockroaches with you.  I’ll dig up a bosun among the squareheads.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Name?”

“Mr. Peasley, sir.”

Since he was no longer an A B., young Matt concluded he might as well accord himself the respect due him as a ship’s officer; so he tacked on the Mister, just to show the Old Man he knew his place.  The master noted that; also, the slurring of the sir as only a sailor can slur it.

“I shouldn’t wonder if you’d do,” he remarked as Matt passed him on his way to the forecastle for his dunnage.

On his way back he carried his bag over his shoulder and his framed license in his left hand.  Two savages were following with his sea chest.

I do declare!” the skipper cried.  “If that lubberly boy hasn’t got some sort of a ticket!  Let me see it, Mr. Peasley.”  And he snatched it out of his grasp.

“So, you’re a first mate of sail, for any ocean and any tonnage, eh?” he said presently.  “Are you sure this ticket doesn’t belong to your father?”

“Sir,” declared the exasperated Matt, “I never asked you for this job of third mate; and if I’ve got to stomach your insults to hold it down I don’t want it.  That’s my ticket and I’m fully capable of living up to it.”

“I’m glad to hear that, Mr. Peasley, because if you’re not I’ll be the first one to find it out—­and don’t you forget it!  I’ll have no marine impostors aboard my ship.  Where do they ship little boys before the mast, Mr. Peasley?”

“On the Grand Banks, sir.”

“I beg your pardon,” said the skipper; “but really I thought you were a Native Son.  My father was drowned there thirty years ago.”