A Deal With Spain by John Arthur Barry — Read

-"The Maria 'll have to go into dock this trip, Mr. Baxter," remarked Captain Jarvis to his owners; "her seams are openin', knees loose from her ribs, an' strained a goodish bit, too. By rights, the copper ought to come off her."

-"Tut, tut!" exclaimed the elder of a pair of stout, clean-shaven, moon-faced men who sat in a grimy office fronting the wharves of Port Waratah, in New South Wales; "d'ye want to ruin the firm? You skippers seem to think that Baxter Brothers is only another name for Rothchilds. Dock be hanged! She'll run another couple o' years yet. An' look here, Jarvis, you came down this time nearly 100 ton short. Don't let that happen again, please. You're a single man, you know, and when our agent up yonder, who's got his instructions, says 'Let it rip,' don't you interfere, but just keep her under them shoots till he says it's a fair thing. An', meanwhile, you keep on thinkin' o' this big pile o' letters," and Uriah Baxter, taking a handful of docketed papers out of a pigeonhole, thrust them rudely under Jarvis's nose. "There," he continued, "those are applications for billets from men with wives and families that'd jump at the chance. Likewise, you might as well bear in mind, when a deck load's mentioned, that you're still workin' a dead horse. Roomatic fever's a lugsury for coastin' skippers to be indulgin' in." And Uriah and his brother James chuckled heartily at the former's little joke.