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A List To Starboard, by F. Hopkinson Smith
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Title: A List To Starboard 1909
Author: F. Hopkinson Smith
Illustrator: F. Hopkinson Smith
Release Date: December 3, 2007 [EBook #23702]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LIST TO STARBOARD ***
Produced by David Widger
A LIST TO STARBOARD
By F. Hopkinson Smith
1909
I
A short, square chunk of a man walked into a shipping office on the East Side, and inquired for the Manager of the Line. He had kindly blue eyes, a stub nose, and a mouth that shut to like a rat-trap, and stayed shut. Under his chin hung a pair of half-moon whiskers which framed his weather-beaten face as a spike collar frames a dog's.
"You don't want to send this vessel to sea again," blurted out the chunk. "She ought to go to the dry-dock. Her boats haven't had a brushful of paint for a year; her boilers are caked clear to her top flues, and her pumps won't take care of her bilge water. Charter something else and lay her up."
The Manager turned in his revolving chair and faced him. He was the opposite of the Captain in weight, length, and thickness--a slim, well-groomed, puffy-cheeked man of sixty with a pair of uncertain, badly aimed eyes and a voice like the purr of a cat.
"Oh, my dear Captain, you