Chapter XXIIIIn Which I Begin to Wonder “Is It Me, or Is It Not Me?”
Chapter XXIII
In Which I Begin to Wonder “Is It Me, or Is It Not Me?”
I had told nobody aboard the Scarboro the particulars of my home-life, or the incidents leading to my being swept out to sea in theWavecrest. Had Ben Gibson been my mate in the crew instead of holding the position of second officer, undoubtedly he would have had my full confidence. As things stood, I had no desire to take either Ben or the old sailor into closer communion with my thoughts.
The great steamship passed us and swept up the Silver River, leaving theWavecrestfar behind. She would reach Buenos Ayres fully twenty-four hours before the sloop could make that port. But this delay did not trouble me at the time. I wanted to think the situation over, anyway.
At the start I was pretty sure that Paul Downes had not come down here on my account. He wasn’t looking for me. Nor did it seem that he had left home under very favorable circumstances. Otherwise he would not be peeling vegetables for the cook of the Peveril.
After the first confusion passed from my mind I could pretty easily figure out the probable incidents that had brought my cousin down here. I knew about how long it had taken the steamship to voyage from her home port. Had my letters been delivered in Bolderhead within reasonable time, my mother and Ham, and the others must have been aware of the explanation of my absence a week or two previous to the sailing of the Peveril from Boston.
I had told Mr. Hounsditch, our lawyer, the whole truth about my sloop being swept away; I had likewise advised Ham Mayberry to gather what evidence he could against my cousin and those who had helped him commit the outrage that had placed me in such peril. It was a cinch that Paul had got wind of these discoveries, had been fearful of being arrested for his part in the crime, and had run away from home.
In doing so, too, it was evident that his father, Mr. Chester Downes, had not been a party to his escape. Paul had slipped away without his father’s help or knowledge of his going. Otherwise Paul would not have been in a moneyless state, and he must have been moneyless before he would have gone to work. Paul didn’t love work, I knew; and I could imagine that there was no fun connected with the job he seemed to have annexed aboard the Peveril.
I reckoned I should probably hear all about it when I went to the consul’s office atBuenos Ayres. Either my mother, or Ham, would write me the particulars of Paul’s running away from home. The Bayne Liner was no mailboat; I expected that my letters had been awaiting me for some time at the port; and the money could have been cabled nearly a month before this date.
Well, we got into Buenos Ayres in good season, and I noted where the Peveril was docked. We moored outside a raft of small sailing crafts and had the dickens of a time taking Ben Gibson ashore on his mattress. A couple of blacks helped us, and after sending in a telephone message to the hospital, a very modern and up-to-date motor ambulance came down and whisked us all off to that institution. I couldn’t speak Spanish, nor could Ben; but those medicos could talk English after a fashion, and soon Ben was fixed fine in a private room and the doctors declared he’d be fit as a fiddle in six weeks.
Then it was up to old Tom and me to find a place to camp. The sailor was for going back to the sloop where board and lodging wouldn’t cost us much; but I confess I was hungry for something more civilized. I wanted bed-sheets and ham and eggs for breakfast—or whatever the Buenos Ayres equivalent was for those viands!
We made some inquiries—of course along the water-front—and found a decent sailors’ boarding house kept by a withered old Mestizo woman (the Mestizoes are the native population of Argentina) who had some idea ofcleanliness and could cook beans and fish in more ways than you could shake a stick at; only, as Tom objected very soon, all her culinary results tasted alike because of the pepper!
It was after breakfast the morning following our arrival that Tom uttered this criticism. We were on our way to the hospital. We found Ben feeling “bully” as he weakly told us, when we were allowed to go up to his private room. Captain Rogers had given him drafts on a local banker and he was fixedrightat that hospital. The doctors had examined him again and pronounced him coming on fine. So, with my mind at rest about him, I tacked away for the little dobe building down toward the water-front which at that day flew the American flag from the staff upon its roof.
It was a busy place and most of the clerks I saw were Mestizoes, or Spaniards, or the several shades of color between the two races. Spanish seemed to be spoken for the most part; but finally a man came out of a rear office and asked me abruptly what I wanted.
“I’d like to see Mr. Hefferan,” I said.
“He’s busy. Can’t see him. What do you want?” snapped this man.
“I’m an American, and I’d like to see him,” I began, but the fellow, who had been looking me over pretty scornfully broke in:
“That’s impossible, I tell you. Tell me what you want? Had trouble with your captain? Overstayed your leave? Or have you just got out of jail?”
Now, I hadn’t thought before this just how disreputable I looked. I was dressed in the slops I had got out of the Scarboro’s chest, was barefooted, and was burned almost as black as any negro—where the skin showed, at least. I couldn’t much blame this whippersnapper of a consul’s clerk for thinking me a tough subject.
“None of those things fit my case, Mister,” I said, mildly. “I know I don’t look handsome, but I’ve been on a whaling bark for several months and I haven’t had time yet to tog up.”
“A whaleship?” he asked. “An American whaleship?”
“Yes, sir,” said I.
“There is none in port.”
“No, sir. I have been with the Scarboro. I’m mighty sure she’s not in port.”
“The Scarboro?” he asked me with a sudden queer look coming into his face. “You’re one of the crew of the Scarboro?”
“Not exactly one of her crew. But she picked me up adrift and I have been with her until lately.”
“You come in here,” said the clerk, slowly, motioning me into the room behind him. And when we were in there he motioned me to a seat and sat down himself in front of me. “Let’s hear your yarn,” he said.
I thought it was rather strange he should be so interested, and likewise that he should stare at me so all the time I was talking. But I gave him a pretty good account of my adventuresfrom the time I was blown out of Bolderhead Harbor, finishing with how I came to be at Buenos Ayres without the bark herself being within six or seven hundred miles of the port.
“So that’s your yarn, is it?” he asked me grimly, when I was done.
I stared at him in turn. To tell the truth, I was getting a little warm. His face showed nothing like good-humor and friendliness. I waited to see what it meant.
“So that’s your yarn?” he repeated. “I thought when I set eyes on you that you were a tricky fellow. But this caps all!” Why, he suddenly raised his voice and stood up, “what do you mean by coming here with such a yarn? I’ve a mind to clap you into jail!”
I stood up, too. I must confess that I felt a bit scared. It was a pretty hot day. I didn’t know but maybe the heat had overcome the fellow and he had gone crazy.
“How dare you come here with such a tale as this, you dirty beach-comber?” he demanded, shaking his fist in my face. “If Colonel Hefferan was here I don’t doubt he’d kick you out of the place. And you’d better go quick, as it is. Don’t you show your face here again——”
All the time he had been walking me backward to the door. I had been obliged to keep stepping to keep before him. But I backed up against the door and stopped. I was getting angry, and I thought I’d gone far enough.
“I don’t know what you’re driving at,” Isaid. “But one thing I do know. My name is Clinton Webb, I have every reason to believe that my mother has cabled me some money in Mr. Hefferan’s care, and I expect there are letters for me, too. I want the money and the letters——”
“Too late, you scoundrel!” he snarled at me, still shaking his fist. “Your game is played too late. Not that we would have believed a scoundrelly beach-comber like you——”
“You don’t believe what?” I shot in, raising my voice.
“I know you’re not Clinton Webb.”
“WHAT?”
“You’re too late,” he said, laughing nastily. “Mr. Webb came here yesterday. He identified himself to the satisfaction of Colonel Hefferan, and he got his money and letters. I don’t know who put you up to this trick, but you’re too late, I tell you!”
He managed to push me aside and now pulled open the door. He put a whistle to his lips and blew a shrill blast. Two barefooted, but very husky negroes came running in from the portico. I had noticed them lounging there when I entered.
He said something sharply to them in Spanish, and they grabbed me. My blood was boiling, and I believe if they had given me a moment’s warning I would have sailed into them. But they held me on either side, and a hundred and eighty pounds of negro on each arm was too much for me. They dragged metoward the main door of the building in a hurry.
“You get out of here!” cried the consul’s clerk behind me. “And don’t you dare come back. If you do you’ll go to the calaboose as sure as you’re a foot high!”
I found myself out upon the sun-broiled street, with the two grinning guards barring my return. It had never entered my mind before that Uncle Sam is sometimes served by an ignorant and pompous nincompoop!
But the satisfaction of making this discovery had a bitter taste. I did not know what to do. My mind was in a whirl. I had some few letters and papers in my pockets by which I had expected—after a time—to assure the consul of my identity. But it seemed that I wasn’t to be given a chance to explain who and what I was.
Somebody had been ahead of me. Some person unknown had represented me before the consul and had, it appeared, made good. My money and my letters had been turned over to this person——
“Paul Downes for a dollar bill!” I ejaculated. “It can’t be anybody else. Who else would know enough about me to represent himself as Clint Webb? He probably knew all about the money and letters. He got away from home broke, worked his passage out here got here only a few hours before I did, and he has beaten me to the consul. Whatever shall I do?”
It was not that I was entirely helpless, althoughI had only a dollar in my pocket. Captain Rogers was to pay me the hundred dollars he had promised me at the end of the whaling voyage, if I decided not to return to the Scarboro. Ben Gibson was sick in the hospital, and old Tom and I were both dependent upon him for our board money. I didn’t propose to be an object of charity. But I must confess that what Ididmean to do had not as yet formed itself rationally in my mind when I got back to old Maria Debora’s.
Tom was out somewhere seeing the sights. He had not gone with me to the consul’s office. Supper time came before the old man showed up and I sat down among the first of the boarders. They were a cosmopolitan lot, rough seamen from several quarters of the globe. They spoke half a dozen different languages and dialects.
I sat with my back to the door, and was only aware of the entrance of another party of men by the noise and stir behind me.
“Will you pass down a dish of those beans mate?” I had just called above the hubbub, speaking to a man across the table.
Instantly somebody stepped quickly behind my chair. A hand came down heavily on my shoulder.
“By all the e-tar-nal snakes!” ejaculated a nasal voice. “I knew I couldn’t be mistaken about that back. But the voice convinced me. By the e-tar-nal snakes! Professor, how came you here?”
I turned slowly to see who had thus addressedme. It was a tall individual at my side—long legged, very lean, and when he laughed it sounded like a horse neighing. He was so very tall that I had not raised my eyes far enough to see his face before he spoke again.
“Professor! ye sartainly give me a start. By the e-tar-nal snakes! I could have taken my dying oath you wasn’t north o’ the cape o’ the Virgins. What you doin’ yere in Maria Debora’s?”
It began to be impressed on my mind with force that I was a good deal like the little old woman of the nursery rhyme. I wondered whether this was really me, or was it not me? My identity as Clinton Webb had been denied at the consul’s, and here a perfect stranger was calling me out of my name—and he seemed insistent upon it, too!
Chapter XXIVIn which I Get Acquainted With Captain Adoniram Tugg
Chapter XXIV
In which I Get Acquainted With Captain Adoniram Tugg
The face I finally saw at the top of that beanpole figure was as long as the moral law. Such a lank, cadaverous visage I don’t think I had ever seen before. The man was a human lath.
And so bronzed and toughened was his hide that he looked to be made out of sole-leather. His mouth was a grim, post-box slit; his nose was a high beak with such a hump on it that I thought it had been broken; but his eyes were human—gray-blue, twinkling with innumerable humorous wrinkles at the outer corners.
“By the e-tar-nal snakes!” he ejaculated when I had tipped back my head so that he could really see my face. “You ain’t the Professor at all! Why, you’re a boy!”
“I am not your friend, the Professor,” I admitted.
“And the voice!” he muttered, staring down at me. “It’s his voice. I ain’t put in my winters with him this last dozen years and more to be mistook in his voice. Say, boy, who be you?”
“Clint Webb is my name,” I replied.
“Where do you hail from?”
“Massachusetts. Late of the Scarboro whaling bark.”
“How old be you?”
“Going on seventeen.”
“Well,” he puffed, with a windy sigh, “you look behind enough like the Professor to be him. And your voice is jest like his—that I’ll swear to! You must be some related.”
“I don’t know that we’ve any scientists in the family,” I said, with a laugh. I rather liked the long-legged individual.
“Don’t know nobody named Vose?” he asked.
“No-o. Don’t think I do.”
He slumped down upon the bench beside me and helped himself to beans.
“By the e-tar-nal snakes!” he muttered. “It does completely flabergasticate me—I do assure you! I never saw two folks so near alike, back-to! You’d oughter see the Professor.”
“I would be only too happy,” I said, politely.
I was interested in my new acquaintance, but not particularly in his friend whom I appeared to favor. He told me in the course of the meal a good deal about himself; and it was interesting, his story.
He was called Captain Adoniram Tugg, a Connecticut Yankee, and skipper of a two-stick schooner called the Sea Spell. He followed an odd business. He was a wild animal trapper, and gathered Natural History specimens of many kinds for museums and menageries. He had just disposed of his last season’scatch, had shipped the last specimen northward by steamship, and was about to sail for the Straits of Magellan again, near which he had his headquarters.
“To tell you the truth, the Professor and me are partners. He’s an odd stick,” quoth Captain Tugg, after supper, as we sat on the broad step before Maria Debora’s door, and he smoked the native cheroots while I listened. “He ain’t been in a civilized town like this since I’ve knowed him. For a l’arned chap, and a New Englander, he seems to have lost all curiosity, and, I reckon, he’s got a grouch on the rest of mankind.”
“How long did you say you had known him?” I asked, idly.
“All of twelve year. He come to my camp one day. Just walked up to the door like he’d come here and knock. But I didn’t suppose there was another white man within five hundred miles—’nless he was aboard some craft beating through the straits.
“He was civil spoken enough; but he never would open up. Most fellows meeting that sort o’ way,” continued Captain Tugg, puffing reflectively, “would git chummy. The Professor’s never told me a thing about himself. As fur as I know he was born full growed, right there on the rocks where my shanty’s built, and ain’t got kith nor kin—fam’bly or enemy—just as lonely as Adam was in Eden before the trouble began!
“Yet,” said the captain, “to look at the Professor, you’d know there was nevernothing crooked about his partner. And I have—but nothing about his past. Only I’m willing to put up real money that whatever happened to Professor Vose was something that was caused by no fault of his. He’s always been sad. Never heard him laugh. He’s the kindest man ye ever see, son. And if one o’ them Injun’s sick, or the like, he treats ’em like a sure-’nough hospital sawbones.
“Then he is a physician?” I asked suddenly.
“I reckon he’s most anything that a man kin l’arn out o’ books,” declared Captain Tugg. “He sent by me to Buenos Ayres here, first trip I made after we’d gone partners in the animal biz, for the greatest old outfit of drugs and the like you ever see. The natives come flockin’ to him for miles an’ miles. He’s one big medicine man, all right, all right!”
“And I look like him?” I queried.
“By the e-tar-nal snakes! you sartainly favor him, son,” declared the captain, enthusiastically. “Why! ye might be his son. Got the same features. The Professor keeps clean shaven. Hair like him, too, now I looks at ye. And your voice—Well! it does beat all how near like him you be. Sure you ain’t got no relative named Vose?”
“How do you know his name is Vose?” I asked, my voice trembling a little, for the old mystery of my father’s disappearance had swept in upon my soul again and I was shaken to the depths.
“Wal! I swear now! I never thought ofthat. I s’pose he might never have told me his real name,” said Tugg.
The whole story took hold of me as it had when Tom Anderly told me of the man that had been picked up by the coaster, Sally Smith, off Bolderhead Neck some fourteen or fifteen years before. Tom had said nothing about the man looking like me; but of course, Tom didn’t know the man long—only until the coaster reached New York City. And his name had been Carver—or so the Unknown had said. This Captain Tugg had been partners with the man he called the Professor for twelve years. Long enough to know his peculiarities and to recognize in my build, and in the tones of my voice, things that reminded him strongly of his partner.
And I had been told, often enough, that I had my father’s stature and his very tone of voice and manner of speaking!
But hold on! there was another way to make connection between the flying strands of this seemingly absurd story. I turned to Captain Tugg calmly.
“By the way, sir,” I said, “do you ever run around to Santiago?”
“Valparaiso, you mean, son?” he returned. “That’s the seaport.”
“I mean Santiago, Chili.”
“Why, pshaw! Ihavebeen to the capital once—three or four years ago.”
“What for, sir—if I’m not too curious? You see, I’ve a reason for asking,” I said.
“I reckon so,” he returned, eyeing megrimly. “And I’ve a reason for not telling you. Private business.”
“I don’t mean to be too ‘nosey,’” I returned. “But I’ll ask you another question. If it hasn’t anything to do with your private business, you’ll answer me?”
“Let drive,” he commanded, thoughtfully smoking.
“When you were in Santiago three or four years ago——”
“Come to think of it, it was five year back,” interrupted the captain.
“All right,” I said. “Did you at that time mail a letter for Professor Vose from that town?”
Captain Tugg smote his knee suddenly. “By the e-tar-nal snakes!” he ejaculated. “Now you remind me.”
“Did you?” I asked, eagerly.
“Only letter I ever knowed him to write. He gave it to me before I started in the Sea Spell. Yes, sir. I mailed it there, for it was among my papers, and I forgot it when we touched at Conception, and again when we put in at Valparaiso.”
“Was that letter addressed to Tom Anderly, at the office of Radnor & Blunt, in New York—a firm of shipping merchants?”
“You win!” ejaculated Captain Tugg. “I memorized that address. Have to admit I’ve always been cur’ous about the Professor. You know him?”
“No, sir,” I said. “But I believe there’s a man here in town who does. Or, at leastknows something about him,” I added, as I remembered how very little Tom Anderly really knew about the man who had been picked up in the fog off Bolderhead Neck.
“I’d like to see that feller,” said Tugg.
“And I’d like mightily to see your Professor,” said I.
Tugg looked at me thoughtfully. “Got a job?” he asked.
“I’m not sure that I shall wait for the Scarboro,” I replied. “We come in with our second mate who was hurt by a whale. He’s in hospital. I have got about all the whaling I want, I believe.”
“I’ll give ye a job aboard the Sea Spell.”
“I’ll think of that,” said I, quickly.
“You’ll not think long, son,” drawled Captain Tugg, grimly. “We get away on the morning tide.”
The suggestion startled me. I felt a drawing toward Captain Adoniram Tugg and his schooner. Rather, I had a strong desire to see the man whom he called his partner—the man who had given his name as Carver on the Sally Smith, but was now known to Tugg as “Professor Vose.” I was in a fret of uncertainty.
Chapter XXVIn Which I Follow the Beckoning Finger of a Spectre
Chapter XXV
In Which I Follow the Beckoning Finger of a Spectre
I shall never forget that evening as I sat beside Captain Adoniram Tugg on Maria Debora’s portico. From the street, which was well down toward the water-front, rose all manner of smells and noises; most of them were unpleasant. Sailors in foreign ports have to put up with a lot of discomfort and are thrown among the most objectionable people and endure more hardships of a different kind than are handed to them aboard ship—and that’s saying a good deal!
It was a warm night, too, and there were crowds on the street. A confusion of different dialects came up to me and it was only now and then that I heard an English word spoken. But these impressions came to me quite unconsciously at the time. I had a problem—and a hard one—to solve.
I had really not recovered from the shock I had received at the American consul’s. My money and letters were gone. Paul Downes had represented himself as me and had got away with the money with which I had expected to pay my passage home. But, of course, I really was not in great straights for means of getting back to Bolderhead.
With the experience I had had upon the whaling bark, and with my physique, I knew very well that I could obtain a berth on either a sailing or a steam vessel bound for the northern ports. I could work my way home after a fashion. Besides, I could sell my sloop for almost enough money to pay for a first-class passage to Boston on a Bayne Liner.
To tell the truth, I was more troubled by the loss of my letters than I was by the loss of my money. I was anxious about my mother—anxious to know how she had endured the shock of my absence, what her present condition was, and all about affairs at home. Besides, there might have been private information in those letters that I wouldn’t want Paul Downes to learn.
My rascally cousin had certainly set out on a career worthy of a pirate! He had run away from home—and probably because he was afraid of punishment for his crimes—and here in Buenos Ayres, so far from Bolderhead, had begun a new career of wrong-doing.
“He certainly is a bad egg!” I thought.
But it wasn’t upon Paul Downes that my mind lingered long. My cousin had played me a scurvy trick; but I was not made helpless by it. I could get home after a fashion—if I wanted to. And that was my problem! Did I want to go home?
Until I had talked with this Captain Tugg I thought I had had my fill of adventure and sea-roving. But his story of the man who had been his partner for twelve years—theman who looked and spoke like me—had wheeled my mind square about! Instead of being headed north in my thoughts, I was at once headed south.I wanted to see this Professor Vose!
Yes. Spectre though the man was—will-o’-the-wisp as he seemed—I desired above all else to see and speak with this man whom Tom Anderly called “Carver” and Captain Tugg knew as “Professor Vose.” If my father, Dr. Webb, was alivehewould be a man with a mysterious past! I wanted to come face to face with this man whom Tugg said was so much like me.
“Where are you going from here when your Sea Spell sails, Captain Tugg?” I asked the Yankee animal collector.
“Goin’ to make the Straits,” drawled he. “Goin’ right back to headquarters for a bit. Mebbe we’ll keep the old schooner in commission—I’m taking down light cargo for headquarters now. But I leave most of the actual snarin’ and trappin’ of the critters to the Injuns—and to the Professor. I got some black fellers down there that would take a prize in a circus sideshow themselves. One of ’em’s over seven foot tall. And strong as wolves,” declared Captain Tugg.
“If I went with you, what would you give me a month?”
“Sixteen dollars—in silver,” he said, promptly. “I see you’ve got eddication—you’d be handy. I could trust you with the schooner after a v’yge or two. I got a goodnavigator, Pedro, my mate; but he can’t talk or write English worth a cent.”
“But suppose I shouldn’t want to remain with you?” I suggested.
“You kin come back here, then. Plenty of steamers comin’ through the straits that touch at Buenos Ayres. My headquarters is at the head of navigable water about a hundred miles north of the Straits. An inlet and river makes in there. It’s a wild country, but I’ve made out to live thereabout for nigh onto fifteen year—and the Professor’s stood it for better than twelve. I can put you in the way of makin’ better money in time.”
But I was not listening to all he said. I suddenly put in:
“Your schooner is going right to your headquarters now?”
“Yes, sir!”
“And that is where this Professor stays?”
“When he ain’t up country trapping critters.”
If you have read thus far in my story you will have discovered one thing about me, if nothing else. I was impulsive—ridiculously impulsive. My bump of imagination was big, too. Otherwise the idea that my father was roaming about the world instead of being peacefully asleep somewhere at the bottom of the sea off Bolderhead, would never have gained such a strong hold upon me.
And my impulsiveness urged me to accept the story of this Professor Vose—as related by Captain Tugg—as something of vital importanceto myself. Here I was at Buenos Ayres, not many weeks’ sail from the place where the mysterious Professor was to be found. On the other hand, it was plainly my duty to make for home by the quickest route possible.
Duty and inclination were at daggers’ drawn again. I told myself that as long as there was a possibility that the mysterious Professor might be my lost father, I should take up with this offer of Captain Tugg. I might never be able to find this man of mystery if I did not sail on the Sea Spell when she slipped away from Buenos Ayres.
“It’s my chance!” I thought. “I can go home if there proves to be nothing in the venture. Why! I might take a steamship right at the Straits for some United States port. It’s my chance! I’ll do it.”
And so—as I had many times before—I came to a reckless conclusion and went into a venture the end of which was mighty misty! I suddenly turned to the lathlike Yankee and told him that I would take up with his offer, and we shook hands upon the compact.
But once I had entered into the agreement I found I had a hundred things to do and little time to do it in. Old Tom Anderly had not come back to the boarding house and I could not wait for him to appear. Captain Tugg was already thinking of loafing along to the dock where his two-stick schooner was moored. I bundled up my dunnage and went with him.
“You’ll take second mate’s berth, son,”said the long-legged Yankee. “Not that you’re fit for it, and I’ll have to be on deck jest as much as ever; but I can’t put a white man for’ard with that bilin’ of off-scourin’s I’ve got for a crew. I can trust Pedro; but there isn’t another man of the crew that I’d trust as far as I could sling a barge-load o’ bricks!
“You’ve the makin’s of a smart sailor in you—I can see that,” pursued the Captain. “And you say you’ve begun studying navigation?”
“I picked up some aboard the Scarboro, listening to Captain Hi and Ben Gibson.”
“We’ll make a mate of you in a year or two,” said Captain Tugg, confidently.
But that speech shocked me. I had no intention of following the sea a year or two. I meant just then to sail down to this place Tugg told about and take a look at the Professor individual. That’s all I wanted. Then it would be “homeward bound” for me.
We reached the schooner and I found her a nice looking craft, bright and shining, with new sails bent on and a scraped and oiled deck and pretty sticks in her. She’s been rigged new throughout and looked more like a yacht than a coasting vessel knocking about the southern trades.
I had left a note at Maria Debora’s for old Tom, and another for him to give Ben Gibson. I had some things to buy, and several of them were by Captain Tugg’s advice. He advanced me money for my purchases, andthey included a second-hand Winchester and a revolver.
“We’re going to a wild piece of airth, son,” said the animal trapper.
Then I saw the man (he was an American) with whom we had left my sloop. He agreed to look after her and keep her in repair for her use, sothatmatter was settled. And then I did something that my conscience told me I should have attended to the moment I arrived in Buenos Ayres. I took five dollars of the sum I had drawn ahead on my wages and sent a short cable to my mother. It told her nothing but the fact that I was alive and well.
But that night, before it came time for me to hustle on deck and help get the Sea Spell under way, I spent writing letters to Ham Mayberry and Mr. Hounsditch. I gave them both the particulars of my treatment at the consul’s office and my knowledge of Paul Downes’ presence at Buenos Ayres and the trick I believed he had played upon me. Of the venture I had now started upon in the Sea Spell I spoke only in a general way. But I promised them I would be back in Buenos Ayres, or on my way home, within a very few months.
These letters went off to the mail on the tug that towed the schooner out of the tangle of shipping. We made sail in half an hour and the Sea Spell made a good leg to windward, beginning her voyage into the south—a voyage on which I was following the beckoning finger of a spectre.
Chapter XXVIIn Which the Sea Spell Goes Ashore on a Most Unfriendly Coast
Chapter XXVI
In Which the Sea Spell Goes Ashore on a Most Unfriendly Coast
I learned a whole lot beside seamanship during those next few weeks as the schooner Sea Spell coasted Buenos Ayres Province and the vast Colonial Territory of Magellan. A stretch of nearly a thousand miles we had to sail to reach the Cape of the Virgins, behind which is the entrance to the Magellan Straits.
The coastwise trade between the ports below Buenos Ayres—Bahia Blanca, El Carmen on the Rio Negro, Port St. Antonio at at the head of the Gulf of St. Matias, San Josefpen, Por Malaspina, Santa Cruz, and clear around to the Pacific seaports of Chili—this coastwise trade, I say, is almost like the trade along our Atlantic seaboard. Inland, Tugg told me, there were vast pampasses empty of all but cattle and wild beasts and some tribes of wild men; but a strip of the seacoast south of the mouth of the Silver River is being rapidly developed.
There are great rivers emptying into the sea here,—the Cobu Leofu, Rio Negro, the Balchitas, the Chupat Desire and Rio Chico—all water-ways which are opening up the country. Argentina is as large as all Eastern and Central Europe together and isenormously rich in mineral and natural products.
This information was brought home to me as, day after day, and with favorable gales, the Sea Spell winged her way southward. She was a fairly fast sailing ship and Captain Adoniram Tugg evidently took pride in her. But her crew was all that he had given me reason to believe. A dirtier, more ungovernable gang of penny cut-throats I doubt never sailed on any honest ship!
I soon learned, beside all the above about Argentina’s coast trade, that Tugg kept his seamen at work through fear. He never changed his drawl in speaking; but when he gave an order there was a grimness about his mouth and a flash in his gray-blue eyes that gave one a cold, creepy feeling in the region of the spine. I don’t know that Captain Tugg went armed. But if an order had been neglected by any man aboard I had the feeling that a weapon would appear in the skipper’s hand and that the mutineer would have dropped in his tracks!
Pedro, the mate, was a snaky, dusky fellow, with huge rings of gold in his ears and a smile that showed altogether too many teeth to be pleasant—a regular alligator smile. As far as I could see, I would just as lief have Pedro’s ill feeling as his friendship. Yet Tugg trusted him implicitly. But I—I locked my stateroom door whenever I lay down to sleep; and I kept the Winchester and the Colts revolver loaded all the time. Perhaps I was foolish; but I felt that we were in a state of war.
The routine duties of the schooner kept me at work, however, for I tried to earn my sixteen a month. Tugg was a good navigator himself. He handled his schooner like a professional yachtsman. Captain Rogers would have admired the man, for he was another skipper who did not believe in lying hove to no matter how hard the wind blew. There was a week at a stretch when I didn’t get thoroughly dry between watches. The Sea Spell just about flew over the water instead of through it!
But a calm fell thereafter and we lay for eighteen hours in the Bay of St. George, the sails hanging dead with not a breath of wind, and the sea like glass. We were within two rifle shots of the shore at one point. Behind this point of rocks was an inlet and the pool made good anchorage without doubt, for there were several sail there, and a jumble of huts on the shore.
We had seen whales for several days and once passed a whaleship at work trying out; but it was not the Scarboro. Now a great whale swam calmly past the Sea Spell, nosing in toward the land, probably following some school of tiny fish upon which he was feeding.
“Wisht I had a crew of bully boys to go after that critter,” sighed Captain Tugg, behind his long cheroot. “He’ll make more’n a bucket o’ ile, you bet!”
“You wouldn’t want to litter up your tidy schooner with grease, sir,” said I, in wonder.
“Mebbe not; mebbe not. But money’sgood wherever you find it, and that critter is wuth two or three thousand dollars. By the e-tar-nal snakes!” he added, using his favorite expletive, “I’d love to stick an iron in that carcass.”
I knew that Adoniram Tugg had been almost everything in the line of sea-going and was not surprised to find that he had driven the iron into many a whale. We stood swapping experiences, idly watching the big whale. The creature sounded and remained down twenty or thirty minutes. When he came up he spouted three times in quick succession, and then lay basking on the surface.
“Looker there!” exclaimed Captain Tugg, suddenly. “By the e-tar-nal snakes! looker there!”
He was pointing at the whale. Up towards its head, on the port side, there appeared on the water a long tail, or fin, at right angles with the whale.
“What in tarnation d’ye s’pose that critter is?” demanded Captain Tugg.
The thing was all of four and twenty feet long, about two wide at the upper end, and tapering to eighteen inches. Almost at once the living club was elevated in the air and then was flung down across the whale’s back—just behind where the head was attached to its body—with a noise like a signal gun.
“Will ye looker that now!” bawled the Captain, in wonder.
Again and again the monstrous club rose and descended. The great whale leaped likea beaten horse under the rain of blows; but whichever way it turned, it could not shake off its assailant. The operator of that club seemed to have it under perfect control, and likewise had means of keeping up with the victim no matter in which direction, or how fast, the latter swam. The blows fell only a few seconds apart, and the whale finally sounded to escape them.
But when he came up again, there was the mysterious enemy, hanging to the whale like a bull dog, and the beating re-commenced. The sea about the hectored whale was tinged with blood. The creature’s back was lacerated frightfully and without any doubt whatsoever, it was being beaten to death by its antagonist.
Tugg grew greatly excited, and ordered a boat lowered. We took four sailors and left Pedro in command of the becalmed schooner, and rowed off towards the scene of the battle between the whale and the mysterious fish.
“It must be some kind of a huge ray,” I suggested. “That’s the tail that is being used like a club.”
“By the e-tar-nal snakes!” exploded Tugg, “it’s a different kind of a sea-bat from anything I ever seed or heard of. You take it from me, that’s a sea-sarpint, or wuss!”
The whale was evidently at its last gasp when we left the schooner. It soon rolled over on its side. The mysterious flail stopped beating the huge body and the water seemed churned excitedly at the nose of the leviathan.
“The porpoises have got at it,” I suggested.
“Not much they ain’t,” returned Captain Tugg. “There ain’t no porpoises around today. Whatever the critter is that killed the whale, it’s at dinner now.”
And it was true. The mysterious denizen of the deep that had beaten the whale to death, ate out the huge mammal’s tongue and had sunk again into the sea before we rowed near enough to distinguish its shape or size. It had disappeared as mysteriously as it had risen and seemingly all it had killed the mammal for was to eat its tongue.
Captain Tugg’s eye glistened when he saw the proportions of that whale closer to. He stood up, looked long towards the inlet where there seemed to be some movement among the craft anchored there, and then ordered us to row in close to the whale’s tail.
He passed a hawser around the narrow part of the whale just forward of the tail and then ordered the men to pull for the schooner. It was a tug, now I tell you! but we got the whale to the Sea Spell after a while. I expected to see the spick and span schooner all messed up with try-out works, and grease, and smoke. It disgusted me that the Yankee skipper should be so sharp after the Almighty Dollar. But I didn’t yet know Captain Adoniram Tugg.
I saw that a number of craft had started out of the inlet—a much puffing steam tug ahead, drawing several smaller boats behind it. There was no wind at all, so the fleetapproached slowly, and we had the whale tackled to the Sea Spell, fore and aft, before the tug was very near.
We made no immediate attempt to butcher the whale and I took pains to get some of its dimensions. It was eighty-two feet over all in length and nearly sixty feet around the biggest part of the body. The lower jaw was nineteen and one-half feet long and the tail, when it was expanded, measured twenty-three feet. I suppose, through the thickest part of the body it must have been as many feet as the expanded tail was wide; at least, so it appeared. These measurements will give the reader some idea of what these huge mammals look like. And Captain Tugg had not been far out of the way when he declared the whale to be worth two thousand dollars.
“What you got to run oil into, sir?” I asked, curiously.
“Wait a bit; wait a bit,” returned the Yankee, puffing on his cheroot. “Let’s see what these Yaller-skins have to offer. If we hadn’t tailed onto the whale as we did they’d had their hooks in it by this time.”
A few words in Spanish to Pedro had stirred up the mate and crew of the Sea Spell. They seemed wonderfully busy getting a lot of gear and litter upon deck. The uninitiated might have thought that we were getting ready to cut up the whale and boil down the blubber in the most approved style.
Finally a man aboard the tug hailed us. Captain Tugg answered in Spanish, and anexcited conversation ensued—at least, excited upon the side of the man aboard the steam vessel and his compatriots. The skipper of the Sea Spell seemed particularly calm and unshaken. I could understand but little of the talk, although I had begun to pick up the bastard Spanish spoken along the coast. I knew the Yankee and the dagos were bargaining.
Finally Tugg sang out to Pedro to belay the work he and the crew were engaged in, and to lower a boat again. The captain was rowed to the tug and after some further conversation I saw certain moneys counted out and paid over to the master of the Sea Spell. He was then rowed back and when he was aboard he ordered the dead whale cast off.
“And git some of your watch down there, Pedro,” added Captain Tugg, “and swab the grease off her side. Ugh! There ain’t nothing nastier than a whale.”
“Yet you were going to cut her up?” I suggested, curiously.
He favored me with a wink. “Buncome, Bluff,” he murmured. “That little play-acting turned me two hundred dollars in gold. Our lying becalmed here wasn’t such a bad thing after all—and here comes the breeze. Jest like finding money in an old coat, Mr. Webb—that’s what that was.”
And so the shrewd old fellow turned everything to account. We got a breeze and were out of sight of the place before the small craft had got the big whale towed into theinlet—where they would beach it and cut it up. Captain Adoniram Tugg was two hundred dollars in pocket, and just because some mysterious sea-beast had seen fit to kill a whale for its tongue!
We had a fine breeze after the long calm, but nothing but fair weather until we rounded the Cape of the Virgins. There the broad entrance of the magnificent Straits of Magellan lay before the nose of the schooner. A little later we had furled all but the topsails and were sailing due north into an inlet masked by many dangerous looking reefs. The mate of the Sea Spell, Pedro, seemed to know the channel well, however, and although Adoniram Tugg remained on deck he did not seem to be worried at all about the schooner’s safety.
“We’ll drop anchor before morning,” he told me. “That is, if the wind holds in the same quarter. You’ll have a chance to see what sort of a good fellow the Professor is tomorrow.”
“What! are we so near your headquarters?”
“That’s the checker,” returned Tugg. “Just a short sail now.”
The inlet was never more than a mile wide; in places the rocks crowded in toward the channel until a strong man could have flung a stone from shore to shore. The waterway was really a series of quiet salt pools.
The shores were wild and rugged. I had never seen a more forbidding coast. When the night dropped down upon us—as it didsuddenly, and a starless sky o’er-head—I wondered how Pedro could smell his way through. I heard Tugg roaring something in Spanish about “the beacon” and then a spark of fire flared out in the darkness far ahead. It looked like a stationary lamp and burned brightly. The captain came over to me, chuckling.
“That’s my partner’s light,” he said, with satisfaction. “He rigged that beacon, and it’s lit every night that the Sea Spell is on a cruise. Pedro can work the schooner up the inlet by that light without rubbing a hair.”
And so we sailed on, and on, without a thought of danger until, of a sudden, I felt the schooner jar throughout her whole length. Captain Tugg jumped and yelled to Pedro:
“What in tarnation you doin’, numbskull? Hi, one o’ you boys! git into the chains with the lead.”
But before the man could sound the Sea Spell grounded again, and this time she ran her keel upon a sand bank so solidly that she stopped dead, with the sails above cracking! There was a hullabaloo for a few minutes, now I tell you. Shouts, commands, the grinding of the schooner’s keel, the slatting of sails. The Sea Spell had driven so hard and fast upon the shoal that she canted neither to port, or starboard. And although the sea was still so that she would not be beaten by the waves, it looked much to me as though she were piled up on this unfriendly coast for good and all!