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--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
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 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!
"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, and they
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, so
_that_ matter 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.