"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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "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!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 least knows 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 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 pa.s.sage 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-cla.s.s pa.s.sage 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--the man 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 alive _he_ would 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 good navigator, 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 b.u.mp 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 importance to 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!