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's catch, 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
never nothing 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 of that. 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! I _have_ been 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 me grimly. "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 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.