"See that you got that hundred and fifty an' the interest in your
jeans the next time we meet," he warned Scraggs as he went
overside.

Time passed. For a month the _Maggie_ plied regularly between
Bodega Bay and San Francisco in an endeavour to work up some
business in farm and dairy produce, but a gasoline schooner cut
in on the run and declared a rate war, whereupon the _Maggie_
turned her blunt nose riverward and for a brief period essayed
some towing and general freighting on the Sacramento and San
Joaquin. It was unprofitable, however, and at last Captain
Scraggs was forced to lay his darling little _Maggie_ up and take
a job as chief officer of the ferry steamer _Encinal_, plying
between San Francisco and Oakland. In the meantime, Mr. McGuffey,
after two barren months "on the beach," landed a job as second
assistant on a Standard Oil tanker running to the West Coast,
while thrifty Neils Halvorsen invested the savings of ten years
in a bay scow known as the _Willie and Annie_, arrogated to
himself the title of captain, and proceeded to freight hay,
grain, and paving stones from Petaluma.

The old joyous days of the green-pea trade were gone forever,
and many a night, as Captain Scraggs paced the deck of the
ferryboat, watching the ferry tower loom into view, or the
scattered lights along the Alameda shore, he thought longingly of
the old _Maggie_, laid away, perhaps forever, and slowly rotting
in the muddy waters of the Sacramento. And he thought of Mr.
Gibney, too, away off under the tropic stars, leading the
care-free life of a real sailor at last, and of Bartholomew
McGuffey, imbibing "pulque" in the "cantina" of some disreputable