"It's all right, Cap," says I. "We're friends."

"Git out!" says he. "I ain't got any friends."

"Sure you have, old scout," says I. "Anyway, there's a lot of people ashore that was mighty pleased with the way you tickled that accordion.

Here's proof of it too," and I holds up the hat.

"Huh!" says he, gettin' his eye on the contents. "Come aboard, then.

Here, I guess you can stow that stuff in there," and blamed if he don't shove out an empty lard pail for me to dump the money in. That's as excited as he gets about it too.

Say, I'd have indulged in about two more minutes of dialogue with that ugly faced old pirate, and then I'd beat it for shore good and disgusted, if it hadn't been for Chunk Tracey. But he jumps in, as enthusiastic as if he was interviewin' some foreign Prince, presses a twenty-five-cent perfecto on the Cap'n, and begins pumpin' out of him the story of his life.

And when Chunk really enthuses it's got to be a mighty cold proposition that don't thaw some. Ten to one, too, if this had been a nice, easy talkin', gentle old party, willin' to tell all he knew in the first five minutes, Chunk wouldn't have bothered with him; but, because he don't show any gratitude, mushy or otherwise, and acts like he had a permanent, ingrowin' grouch, Chunk is right there with the persistence. He drags out of him that he's Cap'n Todd Spiller, hailin' originally from Castine, Maine, and that the name of his old tub is the Queen of the Seas. He says his chief business is clammin'; but he does a little fishin' and freightin' on the side. He don't work much, though, because it don't take a lot to keep him.

"But you have a wife somewhere ashore, I suppose," suggests Chunk, "a dear old soul who waits anxiously for you to come back?"

"Bah!" grunts Cap'n Spiller, knockin' the heel out of his corncob vicious. "I ain't got any use for women."

"I see," says Chunk, gazin' up sentimental at the moon. "A blighted romance of youth; some fair, fickle maid who fled with another and left you alone?"

"No such luck," says Spiller. "My trouble was havin' too many to once.

Drat 'em!"

And you'd most thought Chunk would have let it go at that; but not him!

He only tackles Spiller along another line. "What I want to know, Captain," says he, "is where you learned to play the accordion so well."

"Never learned 'tall," growls Spiller. "Just picked it up from a Portugee that tried to knife me afterwards."

"You don't say!" says Chunk. "But there's the musician's soul in you. You love it, don't you? You use it to express your deep, unsatisfied longings?"

"Guess so," says the Captain. "I allus plays most when my dyspepshy is worst. It's kind of a relief."

"Um-m-m--ah!" says Chunk. "Many geniuses are that way. You must come into town, though, and let me take you to hear some real, bang up, classical music."

"Not me!" grunts Spiller. "I can make all the music I want myself."

"How about plays, then?" says Chunk. "Now, wouldn't you like to see the best show on Broadway?"

"No, sir," says he, prompt and vigorous. "I ain't never seen any shows, and don't want to seen one, either."

And, say, along about that time, what with the stale cookin' and bilge water scents that was comin' from the stuffy cabin, and this charmin'

mood that old Spiller was in, I was gettin' restless. "Say, Chunk," I breaks in, "you may be enjoyin' this, all right; but I've got enough.

It's me for shore! Goin' along?"

"Not yet," says he. "Have the boat come back for me in about an hour."

It was nearer two, though, before he shows up again, and his face is fairly beamin'.

"Well," says I, "did you adopt the old pirate, or did he adopt you?"

"Wait and see," says he, noddin' his head cocky. "Anyway, he's promised to show up at my office to-morrow afternoon."

"You must be stuck on entertaining a grouchy old lemon like that," says I.

"But he's a genius," says Chunk. "Just what I've been looking for as a head liner in a new vaudeville house I'm opening next month."

"What!" says I. "You ain't thinkin' of puttin' that old sour face on the stage, are you? Say, you're batty!"

"Batty, am I?" says Chunk, kind of swellin' up. "All right, I'll show you. I've made half a million, my boy, by just such batty moves as that.

It's because I know people, know 'em through and through, from what they'll pay to hear, to the ones who can give 'em what they want. I'm a discoverer of talent, Shorty. Where do I get my stars from? Pick 'em up anywhere. I don't go to London and Paris and pay fancy salaries. I find my attractions first hand, sign' em up on long contracts, and take the velvet that comes in myself. That's my way, and I guess I've made good."

"Maybe you have," says I; "but I'm guessin' this is where you stub your toe. Hot line that'll be for the head of a bill, won't it--an accordion player? Think you can get that across?"

"Think!" says Chunk, gettin' indignant as usual, because someone suggests he can fall down on anything. "Why, I'm going to put that over twice a day, to twelve hundred-dollar houses! No, I don't think; I know!"

And just for that it wouldn't have taken much urgin' for me to have put up a few yellow ones that he was makin' a wrong forecast.

But, say, you didn't happen to be up to the openin' of Peter K.'s new Alcazar the other night, did you? Well, Sadie and I was, on account of being included in one of Chunk's complimentary box parties. And, honest, when they sprung that clouded moonlight water view, with the Long Island lights in the distance, and the Sound steamers passin' back and forth at the back, and the rocks in front, hanged if I didn't feel like I was on the veranda of our yacht club, watchin' it all over again, the same as it was that night!

Then in from one side comes this boat; no ordinary property piece faked up from something in stock; but a life sized model that's a dead ringer for the old Queen of the Seas, even to the stovepipe and the shirts hung from the forestay. It comes floatin' in lazy and natural, and when Cap Spiller goes forward to heave over the anchor he drops it with a splash into real water. He's wearin' the same old costume,--shirt sleeves, cob pipe, and all,--and when he begins to putter around in the cabin, blamed if you couldn't smell the onions fryin' and the coffee boilin'. Yes, sir, Chunk had put it all on!

Did the act get 'em interested? Say, there was fifteen straight minutes of this scenic business, with not a word said; but the house was so still I could hear my watch tickin'. But when he drags out that old accordion, plants himself on the cabin roof with one leg swingin' careless over the side, and opens up with them old tunes of his--well, he had 'em all with him, from the messenger boys in the twenty-five-cent gallery to the brokers in the fifteen-dollar boxes. He takes five curtain calls, and the orchestra circle was still demandin' more when they rung down the front drop.

"Chunk," says I, as he shows up at our box, "I take it back. You sure have picked another winner."

"Looks like it, don't it?" says he. "And whisper! A fifty-minute act for a hundred a week! That's the best of it. Up at the Columbus their top liner is costing them a thousand a day."

"It's a cinch if you can hold onto him, eh?" says I.

"Oh, I can hold him all right," says Chunk, waggin' his head confident.

"I know enough about human nature to be sure of that. Of course, he's an odd freak; but this sort of thing will grow on him. The oftener he gets a hand like that, the more he'll want it, and inside of a fortnight that'll be what he lives for. Oh, I know people, from the ground up, inside and outside!"

Well, I was beginnin' to think he did. And, havin' been on the inside of his deal, I got to takin' a sort of pride in this hit, almost as much as if I'd discovered the Captain myself. I used to go up about every afternoon to see old Spiller do his stunt and get 'em goin'. Gen'rally I'd lug along two or three friends, so I could tell 'em how it happened.

Last Friday I was a little late for the act, and was just rushin' by the boxoffice, when I hears language floatin' out that I recognizes as a brand that only Chunk Tracey could deliver when he was good and warm under the collar. Peekin' in through the window, I sees him standin'

there, fairly tearin' his hair.

"What's up, Chunk?" says I. "You seem peeved."

"Peeved!" he yells. "Why, blankety blank the scousy universe, I'm stark, raving mad! What do you think? Spiller has quit!"

"Somebody overbid that hundred a week?" says I.

"I wish they had; then I could get out an injunction and hold him on his contract," says Peter K. "But he's skipped, skipped for good. Read that."

It's only a scrawly note he'd left pinned up in his dressin' room, and, while it ain't much as a specimen of flowery writin', it states his case more or less clear. Here's what it said:

Mister P. K. Tracey;