CHAPTER VI





Throughout the long, lazy days that the _Narcissus_ rolled into the
South, Captain Michael J. Murphy's alert brain was busy every spare
moment, striving to discover, in the incomprehensible charter his
owners had made for him, what the French call _la raison d'etre._ Not
having any wireless, he was unable to keep in touch with the stirring
events being enacted in Europe and on the high seas, as news of the
said events filtered by him through space. While on the West Coast,
where all the newspapers are printed in Spanish, he had been equally
barred from keeping in touch with the war, although _en route_ through
the Panama Canal he did his best to buy up all the old newspapers on
the Zone.

Upon arrival in New York with his cargo of nitrate, his anxiety to
make a record in his first command in steam caused him to stay on the
job every moment the _Narcissus_ was discharging, for Cappy Ricks had
impressed upon him, as he impressed upon every skipper in the Blue
Star employ, the fact that a slow boat is slow paying dividends.
Consequently, the worthy captain had had no time to acquaint himself
with the movements of the various fleets, and when he sent his day
letter to his owners on the morning of the day he sailed from Norfolk
for Pernambuco, his action was predicated, not on what he knew, but on
what he felt. The sixth sense that all real sailors possess warned him
that his cargo of coal was not destined for Batavia nor yet Manila,