about him. It was this way--y'see, I ain't keeping anything from you,
boys. Two years ago he was a Methody preacher in Santa Clara. Well, he
was what they call a revivalist, and he was holding forth one blazin'
hot day out in the sun when all to once he goes down, _flat,_ an' don't
come round for the better part o' two days. When he wakes up he's
_another person;_ he'd forgot his name, forgot his job, forgot the whole
blamed shooting-match. _And he ain't never remembered them since._ The
doctors have names for that kind o' thing. It seems it does happen now
and again. Well, he turned to an' began sailoring first off--soon as the
hospitals and medicos were done with him--an' him not having any friends
as you might say, he was let go his own gait. He got to be third mate of
some kind o' dough-dish down Mexico way; and then I got hold o' him an'
took him into the Comp'ny. He's been with me ever since. He ain't got
the faintest kind o' recollection o' his Methody days, an' believes he's
always been a sailorman. Well, that's _his_ business, ain't it? If he
takes my orders an' walks chalk, what do I care about his Methody game?
There, boys, is the origin, history and development of Slick Dick
Nickerson. If you take up this sea-otter deal and go to Point Barrow,
naturally Nick has got to go as owner's agent and representative of the
Comp'ny. But I couldn't send a easier fellow to get along with. Honest,
now, I couldn't. Boys, you think over the proposition between now and
tomorrow an' then come around and let me know."

And the upshot of the whole matter was that one month later the _Bertha
Millner_, with Nickerson, Hardenberg, Strokher and Ally Bazan on board,
cleared from San Francisco, bound--the papers were beautifully
precise--for Seattle and Tacoma with a cargo of general merchandise.

As a matter of fact, the bulk of her cargo consisted of some odd
hundreds of very fine lumps of rock--which as ballast is cheap by the