The Bungalow Boys Along the Yukon
Robert Green Ingersoll
9781465599445
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
On a certain May afternoon, Tom Jessop, assigned to "cover" the Seattle waterfront for his paper, theSeattle Post-Intelligencer, had his curiosity aroused by a craft that lay at the Spring Street dock. The vessel was newly painted, trim and trig in appearance and was seemingly of about two thousand tons register. Amidships was a single yellow funnel. From the aftermost of the two masts fluttered a blue flag with a square of white in the center. The reporter knew that this was the "Blue Peter," flown in token that the steamer was about to sail. But the steamer, which bore the name of Northerner, flew no house flag to indicate the line she belonged to, nor in the shipping news of the day did her name appear. The reporter scented a "story" at once. From some hangerson about the dock he found out that the strange craft had formerly been theJames K. Thompson, of San Francisco, in the coastwise trade. She had been refitted and equipped at the Aetna Iron Works by her purchaser, a Mr. Chisholm Dacre. That was all that the longshoremen could tell him. On the bridge was a stalwart form in a goldlaced cap indicating the rank of captain. By his side stood a well-built man of middle age with a crisp iron-gray beard neatly clipped and a sunburned face, from which two keen blue eyes twinkled quizzically as he gazed down at the figure of the reporter on the dock.
