I am free to confess I felt queer, as that slate-colored monster loomed up before our bow. With one flop of its tail it could smash the craft and give us all a ducking—perhaps kill half the crew. Many of the old whalers' yarns I remembered as I poised that heavy shaft.

But then old Tom whispered: "Now!" I let go with all my might. The harpoon sunk into the huge bull until half its staff was hidden! I had made as pretty a cast as ever Tom Anderly could himself.

"Back all!" shouted Gibson.

Our craft shot backward while the bull gave a startled plunge forward, and the line began to run out fast. In half a minute the beast sounded and we prepared for a long fight. But suddenly he was up again and shot two or three geysers of water into the air. He lay still and we began to take in the slack.

"Call this a fight?" muttered the second mate, with scorn.

I had slipped into my seat and the mate was changing with Tom again, bent upon using the gun for the finishing touches. Suddenly the old bull started. He did not come for the boat but headed directly for the bark, lying not more than half a mile away. He went so fast we could scarcely see the harpoon line. He made the sea about him boil, and the waves in his wake (for we were close up to him) almost swamped us.

"What's he going to do?" screamed Gibson.

"Holy mackerel!" groaned the stroke oarsman. "He's going to bunt the old hooker."

"That's what he's up to," agreed Tom Anderly; "he's after revenge. And if he hits the Scarboro right, we're likely to have a nice time rowing ashore, boys—you can take my word for that!"



CHAPTER XX

IN WHICH OUR CHAPTER OF BAD LUCK IS CONTINUED

That old bull was sure a fighting whale. The annals of whaling do not lack records of such old rogues, as witness the sinking of the Kathleen, of New Bedford on the "12-40 ground" east of the Barbadoes in 1901. A bad whale can do a lot of damage besides smashing whaleboats. Thus far we had suffered no loss from the monsters which the Scarboro was hunting; but as this old bull shot like an arrow for the scarred side of the bark, which was hove to less than half a mile away, it did look as though she was due to get a bad bump.

We were on a short line, however, for the bull had not sounded deeply. Ben Gibson sprang up with the bomb gun and tried to put a lance in the beast at that distance. It only scratched him, I suppose, but it did seem to swerve him from his course.

Instead of striking the Scarboro, he ran past her stern and circled around her. We were snatched after the whale at racing speed and saw the fellows aboard hanging over the rail grinning at us—like spectators at a horse race.

"Them sculpins wouldn't grin so broad if the critter had bumped the Scarboro," declared Tom Anderly.

The beast lay quiet for a bit and we pulled up on him. Before Gibson could get him with the lance gun again, he sounded.

"Now, by gravy!" exclaimed old Tom, who had a wealth of expletives in him when he was excited, "look out for squalls."

"He's been squally enough already, hasn't he?" demanded our young officer.

"You ain't seen the end yet, sir," returned the old man.

"Well, I bet I do see the end——"

He broke off with a sharp intake of breath. Then: "Stern all!" he ejaculated.

Up through the green sea came a huge shadow. We could not shoot the boat back in time to clear the monster. The whale had turned and shot up under the boat!

The boat jarred as the prolonged lower jaw of the bull whale struck her keel forward. There was a mighty rush of waters, like a cataract; the whaleboat was flung aside, and Ben Gibson shot over the bow and fell right into the open mouth of the whale!

I know I screamed something—I don't know what I said. The boat was shooting back under the impetus of the oars, and we escaped overturning.

But I had seen Ben fall and saw him disappear into the cavern of the creature's mouth. I saw, too, the jaws come together once, and I swear our second mate was in the bull's mouth when it closed!

But the next moment the maw of the beast opened and in the swirl of foam and blood-streaked water I caught sight of the senseless Gibson.

"Pull!" I yelled.

And although I had no business to give a command, the men obeyed me and the boat shot forward again. I seized our second mate by his shirt collar. In a moment I had lifted him into the boat.

At the same moment Tom Anderly got forward, seized the gun which poor Gibson had dropped, and sent a bomb-lance into the whale at so short a distance that it seemed as though we might have touched him by putting out a hand.

But that fighting whale died hard. It leaped after the bomb exploded and again we were almost overturned.

"Cut loose! Let the beast go!" cried some of the men.

But Tom Anderly would not lift the boat hatchet. To cut a whale free, unless it becomes absolutely necessary, is "against the religion" of any old whaler. As for myself, I was bending over the injured second mate, trying to revive him.

Ben Gibson had been through a most awful experience. Old Cap'n Wood, of Nantucket, had been in the mouth of a whale, and lived to tell the story. I remembered of reading about his experience. But it was a most awful accident and I feared indeed that the young officer was dead.

Therefore I was not really cognizant of what was going on until half the crew of our boat began to shriek a multitude of commands and advice. Then I looked up and saw that the bull whale for a second time was charging the Scarboro.

It was plain the old fellow realized that the bark was his enemy. He paid no attention to the boat that was tearing through the sea behind him. And we was so near the bark now that nothing could be done to swerve the the fighting whale!

Straight on dashed the big bull, at a speed that snubbed the whaleboat's nose under water, for we were close up to the beast. Straight on, with tremendous headway and a fearful, gathering momentum, headed for the grimy, battle-scarred broadside of the old Scarboro. Those aboard of the bark could do nothing. She was still hove to. The fighting whale had missed her by a hand's breadth once before, but this time he did not swerve.

"Cut loose, Tom!" I yelled, finally understanding—as did the other men with us—the menacing disaster. In a few seconds we would smash into the bark's hull, whether the whale dived or not.

But the bull didn't dive, and Tom swung the axe. His quick stroke severed the line and every man in our boat was awake to the impending catastrophe. Stroke sprang for the long steering oar. The rapid swing of it barely swerved the heavy boat out of the course of sure disaster.

On went the released whale. Plumb his head smashed against the hull of the big bark. The collision was a most awful shock. Consider a heavy train pushing a mogul locomotive down grade ahead of it, and the whole thing ramming another train—the result could have been no more awful.

The three-inch plank of which the vessel's side was made splintered like the thinnest veneer. The ends of big timbers in her hull were ground to pulp and matchwood. With a terrific splash of his tail, the fighting whale rolled over, after rebounding from the bark, and lay, seemingly stunned!

The bark, driven over almost on her beam ends, righted slowly. We knew the whale must be as good as dead, but we had no thought for him then. The smashing of the Scarboro might mean torture and death to every man of her crew. We were out of the track of general steamship routes, and far, far from land. If the bark sank, we were done for!



CHAPTER XXI

IN WHICH THE WAVECREST SETS SAIL AGAIN

Nobody gave any further thought to the whale. My own eyes were set upon that yawning wound in the hull of the old Scarboro. After the shock of the collision the bark righted slowly, and when she did so the sea rushed into the hole in a most awful fashion.

We rowed rapidly toward the bark and made fast to the hoisting tackle. We had a sling let down for the second mate, who was still unconscious. Before we got him on the deck and got aboard ourselves, Captain Rogers had all hands remaining aboard at work to stop the dreadful leak.

Had all six of the boats been out at this time I fully believe the Scarboro would have gone to the bottom. Or, if there had been any sea to speak of, she would have gone down inside of two hours.

But being right on the job, as you might say, Captain Hi lost few seconds in the work of seeking to save the bark—and, incidentally, all hands. He did not even take the time to see how badly his nephew was hurt just then. As our crew came over the rail he set them to work, too.

"Take poor Ben below and let cookee do what he can for him," he bawled to me. "I want you to deck here, Webb."

There was a light breeze, and he had some canvas put on her and got the old bark hove over so that the hole the whale had smashed (it was right at the water-line) was where it could be got at. Of course, it was impossible at first to do anything from inside. There were two men on the pumps and they kept steadily at work, now I tell you.

Mr. Rudd, the carpenter, was not aboard; but Captain Webb did all that could be done at the moment. He put slings under the arms of two men and let them down the canted side of the craft, on either side of the great gap. Then canvas was let down—three thicknesses of heavy, new cloth—and this was laid over the hole after the splinters were cut away, and tacked to the hull, cleats being used to hold it in place all the way around.

Meanwhile the tar-buckets had been heated up, and those fellows gave the canvas and the hull all about it a good coating of tar. We ran several miles on this tack, and until the job was completed. Then, when the men and the tar-buckets were inboard again, the Scarboro was put over on the other tack and we beat back toward the whaleboats.

I can't say that no water came in; but we could keep the water down by working steadily at the pumps; and before night we had the other boats aboard, and three whales—including the old bull that had done the damage—strung together nearby. We could do nothing toward cutting up and trying-out the whales until the bark was safe.

A sharp blow just then would have fixed us, and that's a fact. Mr. Rudd and his helpers went below and broke out enough cargo to get at the hole stove in her side. Meanwhile we had to keep the pump brakes moving and the water that flowed from the pipes and out at the hawser-holes was as clear as the sea itself. The old bark had settled a good bit, and we were by no means out of danger.

Here we were, by the Captain's reckoning, all of four hundred miles southwest of Cape St. Antonio, which is south of the huge mouth of the de la Plata. To set sail for the principal port of Argentina—or any other port—would not suit Captain Hiram Rogers a little bit. Nor am I at all sure that, crippled as she was, the bark could have got to land.

Mr. Rudd would be some days repairing the damage done by the fighting whale. And meanwhile, what was going to become of poor Ben Gibson?

For our cheerful, boyish second mate was badly hurt. Consider: the whale had actually shut his jaws on Ben, and that one crunch should, by good rights, have finished the young fellow.

But he was reserved for a better fate, it seemed. When the captain overhauled his nephew, he found that he had sustained, beside the scalp wound from which he bled so much, a broken arm, a lacerated leg above the knee, and several broken ribs. These ribs and possible internal injuries are what feazed Captain Hi. He was no mean "catch as catch can" surgeon; most whaling captains have had to tackle serious medical and surgical difficulties in their careers.

Ben, however, was the skipper's own flesh and blood—his sister's child. He couldn't face that sister (she was a widow) if he brought Ben back to New Bedford a cripple for life. And the whale had certainly smashed him up badly.

"Clint Webb," he said to me, in a most serious tone, when he had made his examination of the poor fellow, "we are in a bad hole. It'll take a week o' fair weather for the carpenter to make us all tight again—and we ain't even sure of the weather. Then, there's the three whales alongside. We can't throw them away. The crew would have cause to complain. But this boy ought to have doctor's care."

I agreed with him, but had nothing to offer.

"I couldn't sail for the Plate now," he ruminated, "if I wanted to. Repairs of the ship must come before repairs of the boy. Webb! it's a good season, and the winds are fair. Would you make an attempt to get Ben to Buenos Ayres in that sloop of yours?"

"In a minute!" I declared, quickly, for the suggestion went hand in hand with the desire I had been milling in my mind for days.

"I'll mark you a chart. You can't miss of it. Anyhow, you'll hit land if you keep on going. There are fine hospitals at Buenos Ayres. I'd feel more as though I'd done my duty by Ben if I got him there. I'll find you a man to go along. Two of you can work that sloop prettily."

"Aye, aye, sir," I agreed.

He bustled away and brought back old Tom Anderly. I couldn't have wished for anybody else. In a quarter of an hour we had agreed on everything. Tom and Ben were to stick around Buenos Ayres until they heard from Captain Rogers, or the Scarboro put in for them. Of course, I would be free once I got to land, unless I wanted to stick the voyage out and claim my lay at the end. However, I was to have one hundred dollars in gold from the captain, and the sloop, whichever way I decided.

Captain Rogers had set Ben's arm and dressed his other wounds. Ben was conscious, but in great pain from the broken ribs. He knew what we were going to attempt, and he was willing to trust himself to old Tom and me. And the next morning, as soon as it was light, the Wavecrest was slung over the side, her mast stepped, and the riggers got to work on her. By noon she was provisioned and everything was ready for our cruise.

Ben Gibson was let down into the cockpit of the Wavecrest on a mattress and was got comfortably into the cabin without any trouble. There was a steady breeze, but the sea was calm. The crew bade us godspeed and the skipper wrung my hand hard; but only said:

"Do the best you can for him, Webb. I'm trustin' to you and Tom to pull the lad through."

We got the canvas up and sheered off from the Scarboro's side. We could hear the muffled hammering of the carpenter and his mates inside her wounded hull. They were fighting to keep the old hooker above the seas. As we drifted away from the whaling bark I was not at all sure that we should ever see her above the seas again.

Our canvas filled and the sloop got a bone in her teeth and walked away with it just as prettily as ever she had sailed in Bolderhead Harbor.

"She's a beauty boat, lad," growled old Tom Anderly. "And she's taking us out o' range o' them carcasses—Whew! they sartainly do begin to stink. I don't begredge the boys their job of cutting them whales up when they git at it."

We left the gulls and the sharks behind, with the bark and the rotting whales, and soon they were all far away—mere specks upon the horizon.



CHAPTER XXII

IN WHICH WE SAIL THE SILVER RIVER AND I SEE A FACE I KNOW

I had covered, perhaps, almost as much open sea when I was blown out of Bolderhead in the sloop, as now lay between the Scarboro and Cape St. Antonio. But, as you might say, I had taken that first trip blindly. This time I had my eyes open and all my wits about me—and I knew that we had taken a big contract. The Wavecrest was a mere cockle-shell in which to cross such a waste of open sea as that which lay between us and the mouth of Rio de la Plata.

But the Wavecrest was a seaworthy craft, and that indeed had been proved. She had been freshly caulked while she lay on the deck of the Scarboro, and her seams did not let in enough water to keep her sweet. She sailed well in either a light or heavy wind and I really had no fear that we should not make the great seaport of the Argentine Republic all in good time.

It was bad for poor Ben Gibson, however. The sun was hot and in the cabin the atmosphere was sometimes stifling. However, the captain had warned me to keep the fellow as quiet as possible and not to move him if it could be helped before we reached our destination.

Old Tom sailed the sloop most of the time, and I gave my attention to the wounded youth. But we tried to keep something like watch and watch. We only slept by snatches, however, and never a cloud appeared in the sky as big as a man's hand that we did not watch it cautiously. As for sail, or steam, we saw neither till we raised the cloudy headland that marked Cape St. Antonio on the skyline.

It was a pretty tame cruise to write about, for nothing really occurred. We were only on the watch for some untoward happening; that made it nerve wracking. But even when we sighted the spur of land which we knew marked the southern boundary of the de la Plata—the widest mouth of any river on the globe, for it is not masked by islands at all—we were not out of danger. The peril of gales still menaced us. We had many miles to sail yet before we reached Buenos Ayres.

Indeed, we got a stiff blow before sighting Point Piedras; but it favored us after all, and the Wavecrest ran before it at a spanking pace. We had sighted plenty of other craft now—both sail and steam. One great, red-funneled steamship came in behind us, and at first we thought it was making for Montevideo, which is on the northern side of the river; but finally old Tom made out the steamer and what she was.

"It's one of the Bayne Line steamers from Boston," he declared. "I know them red pipes. They touch at Para, Bahia, and other ports. She's bound for Buenos Ayres now—no doubt of it."

The little squall that had kicked up something of a sea had now passed. The great steamship overhauled us rapidly. I chanced to be at the helm and I kept my head over my shoulder a good deal of the time, watching the approach of the great, rusty-hulled craft. Somehow I felt as though I had some connection with the boat. A foolish feeling, perhaps; yet I could not shake it off.

The Wavecrest was bowling along nicely so I could give my attention to the big ship, which I soon made out to be the Peveril. Old Tom was right. She was one of the Bayne Line ships, coming from Boston—coming from home, as you might say! To tell the truth, I was a good bit home-sick.

I let my mind wander back to Bolderhead. Circumstances had made it possible for me to leave the Scarboro, and I was now nearing Buenos Ayres where I had written my mother to cable me money at the American consul's bureau. I had got enough of whaling. Adventure and travel is all right; but I had had a taste of it, and found it to be merely an alias for hard work!

"It's me for home on the first steamship going north," I told myself, wisely. "I've had adventure enough to last me a while."

I was sailing on the Silver River, as the exploring Spaniards had first called this noble stream, and there might be a lot of fun and hard work ahead of me if I remained with old Tom and Ben Gibson until they rejoined the Scarboro. But I wasn't tied to them. I'd probably have plenty of money with which to pay my passage home; and just then I wanted to see my mother, and Ham Mayberry, and lots of other folk in Bolderhead, more than I wanted to be knocking about in strange quarters of the world.

I glanced around at the steamship again. She had almost caught up to us, for although the sloop had a fair wind, the Peveril was sailing three lengths to our one. On and on she came, the smoke pouring from her stacks. Her high, rusty side loomed up not more than a cable's length away. I could see the passengers walking on her upper decks, and the officers on her bridge. Below, the ports were open, their steel shutters let down on their chains like drop-shelves.

Some of the crew were looking out idly upon the Wavecrest as the steamship slipped by. A cook in a white cap came to one port and threw some slop into the sea. As he emptied the bucket my eyes roved to the very next port aft. There somebody sat peeling vegetables. I could see the flash of the knife in the sunlight, and the long paring of potato peel curling off the knifeblade.

It was an idle glance I had turned upon the vegetable peeler. He was only a cook's apprentice, or scullion. There was no reason why my gaze should have fastened upon him with interest. Yet my eyes lingered, and suddenly the fellow raised his head and his face was turned toward the open port.

The mental shock I experienced made me inattentive to my helm and the Wavecrest fell off. Old Tom sang out to know what I was about, and silently I brought the sloop's nose back again. The steamship had slipped by us and the wake of her set the little craft to jumping.

My mind was in a fog. I steered mechanically. The face I had seen at the open port of the Peveril was still before me, as in a vision. I knew I had not been tricked by any hallucination. I had not even been thinking of the fellow at the time. And I was sure that the cook's assistant aboard the Peveril had not seen and recognized me.

But I could not be mistaken in my identification of that face at the port. It was that of my cousin, Paul Downes—Paul Downes, here on the de la Plata, thousands of miles from home, and evidently working in the menial position of cook's helper on the steamship, Peveril! Is it to be wondered that I was amazed?



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 the Wavecrest. 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 the Wavecrest far 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 at Buenos 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 of cleanliness 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 fixed right at 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 adventures from 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," I said. "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 me toward 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, although I 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 I did mean 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 addressed me. 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 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'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.



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—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.



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 is enormously 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's good 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 like a 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 fleet approached 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 an excited 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 the inlet—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 did suddenly, 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!



CHAPTER XXVII

IN WHICH WE FIND THE NATIVES MORE UNFRIENDLY THAN THE COAST

The bright light ahead had disappeared. Tugg was berating Pedro for getting off his course and running the schooner aground. In a minute, however, another light flashed up nearby and I saw that a huge bonfire had been kindled on the shore not more than a cable's length away.

"What in the e-tar-nal snakes is that?" bawled Captain Adoniram Tugg, seeing this fire. "That ain't the Professor—not a bit of it."

In a minute the flames rose so high that we could see figures moving in the light of them. And wild enough figures they were—half naked fellows, taller than ordinary men, and waving spears and clubs.

"I believe some of your Patagonian giants you have been telling me about have gone on the warpath, Captain," I said.

"Not a bit of it! Not a bit of it," he snarled. "They're as tame as tiger-kittens."

"Just the same I'm going to get my gun and pistol," I declared, and I dove below.

When I came back to the deck two more fires were burning. The shore—which was a low bluff—was illuminated for some hundreds of yards. There was a gang of a hundred or more dancing savages about the fires. I was frightened; those savages were not "gentled" enough to suit me.

The captain and Pedro had evidently come to a decision. The fires revealing the coast as they did showed them where the mistake had been made. Tugg said:

"Can't blame Pedro. That beacon lantern we saw had been shifted. I hope those wretches yonder haven't got the Professor foul. But one thing is sure: They brought that big lantern clear across the inlet and set it up on the west shore. No wonder we ran aground. It was a pretty trick, I do allow."

"And these are the natives you told me were perfectly harmless?"

"Not my boys," said Tugg. "There are wild tribes about, as I told you. This bilin' of trouble-makers are from up country. I'm dreadful afraid they've attacked the camp first and put the Professor and my boys out of the way. They must have been on the lookout for the Sea Spell. Had sentinels posted along shore. They want to loot her."

"And it looks to me as though they'd do it," I observed. "I never shot at a man, Captain; but I am going to begin shooting if those dancing dervishes start to come off to us in those big canoes I see there."

"Don't begin to shoot too quick, Mr. Webb," said the Yankee skipper. "I reckon we'll be able to handle them all right."

"But your crew isn't armed."

"You bet they ain't. And me with more than two thousand in gold aboard?" he snorted. "By the e-tar-nal snakes! I guess they ain't armed. I wouldn't trust 'em with firearms."

I began to feel pretty bad. I knew they were a murderous looking lot of fellows; but I didn't suppose that Tugg traveled in such peril all the time. I was learning a whole lot for a boy of my age. To be adventuring about the world "on the loose" as old Tom Anderly called it, had seemed a mighty fine thing. But just at that moment, with the schooner shaking on the shoal, the fires flaring on the beach, and the savages dancing and yelling at us, I would have given a good deal to have been where I could call a policeman!

But Adoniram Tugg showed no particular fear. I was the only person who had a weapon on deck. The Yankee skipper did not even go down for his own gun that hung over his stateroom door. Instead, he turned to Pedro and gave a quick command.

The mate and two of the sailors dashed for the forward hatch and had it off in a minute. Tugg turned to me again, drawling just the same as usual:

"Keep a thing seven year, they say, and it's bound to come handy, no matter what it is. I bought a miscellaneous lot o' truck out o' a seaside store thar in Buenos Ayres because there was a right good chronometer went with the lot. Ah! that's the box, Pedro. Rip it open—but have a care. Don't bring fire near it—hey! you there with the cigaroot! Throw it away. You want to blow yourself to everylastin' bliss?"

"They're manning those canoes, Captain!" I shouted, for my attention was pretty closely fixed upon the savages.

"Let 'em come!" he grunted. "We'll fix 'em, Mr. Webb; we'll fix 'em."

There were four large canoes. I heard Tugg whispering to himself about them as he watched the half-naked paddlers urging them toward the schooner:

"Ugly mugs. From up river. Come three or four hundred miles in them canoes, mebbe. Wisht I knew what has happened the Professor. They sartainly have cleaned our headquarters, or they wouldn't have displaced that beacon lantern." Then he turned to urge Pedro. "Got that mess o' stuff out o' the box? That's it. Now, Mr. Webb, never mind them guns o' yourn. Put 'em down and bear a hand here."

He was the skipper and I obeyed; but I hated to give up the rifle. It looked to me as though we were in for a hand-to-hand fight with the savages—and they really were giants. I had read of these Patagonians; but I had never more than half believed the stories they told about them. I could realize now that any fifty of them one might see in a crowd together would average—as the books said—six feet, four inches in height.

As I came forward he was rapidly distributing—he and Pedro—the articles which had been packed in the box. He gave half a dozen to each man of the crew. He likewise broke up lengths of slow-matches—that Chinese punk that is usually used when fireworks are set off. And it was fireworks he was giving me—half a dozen good-sized rockets!

"What shall we do with these?" I demanded. "Why, Captain Tugg! you don't mean to illuminate the schooner? Those savages will pin us with their spears if we light up here."

He spoke first to the crew, and they ran at once and crouched under the bulwarks on that side nearest the shore. The canoes were within a hundred yards.

"Quick!" he said to me. "Start the first rocket fuse. Lay it on the rail here, son, and aim it at them canoes. We'll pepper them skunks—now, won't we?"

All along the line of the rail I heard the fuses sputtering. Little sparks of blue and crimson flame shot into view. "Let 'em go!" bawled Adroniam Tugg.

The four canoes came fairly bounding over the water. I never knew that canoes could be paddled so rapidly. They were almost upon the schooner when the first rocket went off with a terrible sputter. It shot like a bird of fire right into the leading canoe, and then another, and another, shot off until the air between the schooner and the canoes seemed filled with shooting flames.

The savages' yells changed monstrously quick. When the rockets began to blow up and sprinkle around balls of red and blue and green fire, the boats were emptied in a moment or two. Wildly shrieking, the naked savages sprang overboard and swam back toward land, while we along the rail of the Sea Spell sent broadside after broadside of rockets after them.

We saw them splash through the shoal water, gain the land, and disappear beyond the illumination of the fires before all our skyrockets were used up.

"Avast firin'!" roared Captain Tugg, and Pedro, the mate, repeated the order in Spanish. "Now out with a boat, Pedro, and save those canoes. They'll come in handy for our use."

No matter what the situation might be, the Yankee could not lose sight of the main chance. We gathered in those canoes and then awaited daylight before we made any further move. We found then that the savages had totally disappeared.

"We can warp her off and I doubt if she's damaged at all," declared Captain Tugg. "But I'm too worried about the Professor to begin that now. I'm going to leave Pedro here and we'll take some of the boys and sail up to headquarters and see what's happened there. You can bring your hardware, Mr. Webb. We may have need of it after all, for if they've troubled the Professor, I swanny I'll shoot some of the long-legged rascals!"

What I had read of white men in wild countries had led me to believe that they usually shot the savages first and inquired into their intentions afterward. But Captain Tugg assured me that in the fifteen years he had been in this country he had never been obliged to more than string a few savages up by their thumbs and ropes-end them!

"They've been ugly at times—not my boys around here, but some of the far, up-country tribes—and I've been obliged to show them things. I'm kind of a wonder-worker, I be. Them scamps that waylaid us last night will scatter the news of that fireworks show throughout ten townships, and don't you forgit it. Jest because Adoniram Tugg can show 'em something new ev'ry time is what's kept his head on his shoulders for fifteen years."

"Goodness! they're not head-hunters?" said I.

"No. But they'd take a white man's head and sell it to tribes farther north that do prize sech trophies. Oh, this ain't no country for tenderfoots, son. There ain't no tract in the back-end of India, or the middle of Africa, that's as barbarous as a good wide streak of South America yet."

And I could believe that later when, after sailing some miles up the inlet, we came to the burned ruins of a collection of huts and sheds. This was Tugg's headquarters, and his partner, Professor Vose, the man I had come so far to see, was not there.



CHAPTER XXVIII

IN WHICH ARE RELATED SEVERAL DISAPPOINTMENTS

The attack on the encampment of the animal trappers had evidently been made several days before. The fire had devastated the place. All the animals in cages had been killed or released. And in the blackened ruins and about the clearing, on the rocks, there lay the bodies of more than a dozen Patagonians. Tugg showed real feeling when he saw these dead men.

"Poor boys!" he muttered, standing leaning on his rifle and gazing upon one fellow who was really a giant. "They was square, jest the same. Ye see, they fought for the Professor and the traps. But them scoundrels was too many for them."

It was a dreadful sight. I do not want to write about it. Nor do I wish to give the particulars of our search of the neighborhood for some trace of the single white man who had been in the vicinity—the man whom Tugg called the Professor, but who was the Man of Mystery to me. We found a place where a huge fire had been built beneath the trees. There was a green liana hanging from a high limb and the end of the liana had been tied around the ankles of a man. The feet shod in American made boots were all of that victim of the savages' cruelty which had not been burned to ashes.

"It's a way they have," whispered Tugg. "They start the poor feller swinging like a pendulum, and every time he swings through the flames he's burned a little more—and a little more——"

I turned sick with the horror of it. There was nothing more to do. Tugg recognized his partner's boots. The savages had made their raid, burned the camp, destroyed all they could, and done their best to wreck the Sea Spell. There must have been one traitor among Tugg's men at the encampment or the savages would not have known of the schooner's approach. At least, I shall always believe so.

But when the balance of his Patagonians came in from the swamp where they had hidden after the attack, the captain seemed to believe all their stories, took them back into his confidence, and at once set to work to repair the damage done by the up-river Indians.

I confess that I was desperately disappointed. And I felt depressed, too, over the death of the mysterious Professor Vose, or Carver, or whatever his name had been. I could not get rid of the thought that perhaps the man had been my father. But I should never know now, I told myself. Whether it were so, or not I need have no doubt regarding my poor father's death. If he had not been drowned off Bolderhead Neck, and had been hidden away in this wilderness so many years, he had gone to his account now.

I was sorry I had come down here in the Sea Spell; but being here I had to somewhat wait upon Captain Tugg's pleasure before I could get away. We warped the Sea Spell off the shoal and found her uninjured. She had scarcely started a plank. Then the animal trapper set us all to work rebuilding his camp, animal cages, and stockade. We were three solid months repairing the damage done by the savages; but then Tugg had a camp that would be impregnable to the wild men from up the river.

I had expressed to him at once my wish to return to the coast where I could get a chance to work my way north in some vessel. But it was three months before he could spare me a canoe crew to take me as far as Punta Arenas, on the Straits. From that point I would be able to board some vessel bound into the Atlantic, and if I could get back to Buenos Ayres I would be all right.

I had wasted nearly six months in following a will-o'-the-wisp. I might have been at home long ago, had I not come down here on the schooner. More than a year had passed since that September evening when my cousin, Paul Downes, and I had had our fateful quarrel on my bonnie sloop, the Wavecrest, as she beat slowly into the inlet at Bolderhead. I had roved far afield since that time, had seen strange lands, and strange peoples, and had endured hardship and hard work which—after all was said and done—hadn't belonged to me.

Clint Webb need not be knocking about the world, looking for a chance to work his way home before the mast. As the canoe Tugg had lent me sailed south through the inlet, with Pedro and two gigantic Patagonians for crew, I milled these thoughts over in my mind, and determined that, once at home, I'd stick there. Not that I was tired of the sea, or afraid of work aboard ship; but I was deeply worried regarding my mother and what might be happening to her so far away.

Nothing but the desire to set eyes on the man that looked like me and talked like me had brought me 'way down here in Patagonia; I had never told Captain Tugg my real reason for shipping on the Sea Spell, not even when I bade him good-bye. The old fellow had seemed really sorry to have me go.

"If you git tired of civilization and want to come down this way again, son," he told me, "you'll be as welcome as can be. Just come here, walk in, hang up your hat, and you'll find a job right at hand. I got a big order for ant-eaters, jaguar, tiger-cats, and the like, on hand and I'll likely be here for a couple of years—off and on. Goin' to be mighty lonesome, too, without the Professor," he added, shaking his head, sorrowfully.

Tugg was a money-lover; but I know that he didn't hold the loss of his animals and outfit as anything to be compared to the miserable end of his partner. I liked him for that.

I can't say that I enjoyed that canoe trip to the Straits. We had a queer three-cornered sail that was rigged in some native way, and as the wind was free we traveled the hundred or so miles to the mouth of the inlet in good time. But I did not sleep much; Pedro and the giants might easily knock me on the head, take my few dollars and my gun and other traps, and drop me overboard. I couldn't believe that they were to be trusted.

But nothing really happened until we were within a mile or so of the mouth of the long lagoon. I could see a bit of the strait and over the rocky headland appeared a banner of smoke. It was from the stack of a steamship bound east. I pointed it out to the mate of the Sea Spell and told him how anxious I was to reach that very craft. I had money enough left of my wages to pay my fare to Buenos Ayres at least—perhaps to Bahia; and surely the steamship would stop somewhere along the east coast.

Pedro jabbered to the Patagonians, and the wind having fallen light they got out the paddles and set to work. I showed them each a silver dollar and they went at it like college athletes. Such paddling I never saw before, and it seemed to me we shot out of the inlet about as fast as though we were ironed to a bull whale!

But we were too late. The steamship had a long sea-mile on us and she wasn't stopping for a canoe. We should have to trim our sail again and make for the West and Punta Arenas. As we swung the canoe's head around, however, I caught sight of a big ship, with a wonderful lot of canvas set, passing the steamship and heading our way. She sailed the straits like a huge bird, her white canvas bellying from the deck to the extreme points of her wand-like topmasts. She was a pretty sight.

I began to stare back at her more and more as she came up, hand over hand. I saw that she was a bark; then I saw that her crowsnest was occupied by a lookout. Only one manner of craft would have a man in the crowsnest on a clear day like this. She was a whaler.

I had no glass; but I fixed my gaze upon her black bows as they rose and fell as she came through the waves. My heart had begun to beat with excitement. There were the huge white letters as she paid off a bit and I could see part of her run and broadside. I couldn't be mistaken, and suddenly I broke out with a loud cheer, for I could read the two painted lines:

SCARBORO New Bedford



CHAPTER XXIX

IN WHICH I AM NOT THE ONLY PERSON SURPRISED

I yelled to Pedro and then sprang up, tied a handkerchief to an oar and waved it frantically. As the old bark swung down toward us I saw several figures spring into the lower rigging, and by and by their hands waved to me. I spoke again to the mate of the Sea Spell and he said he could bring the canoe in close to the bark if they would throw me a rope. I knew they had identified me, and I was glad to see Ben Gibson standing on the rail and yelling to me.

I gave each of the Patagonians a dollar and Pedro two, shook hands with them all, slung my rifle over my shoulder, hooked one arm through my dunnage-bag (which was fortunately waterproof) and stood ready to seize the rope which was flung me. The Patagonians brought the canoe right up to the looming side of the old bark, and as she dipped deep in the sea, I sprang up and "walked up" her side, clinging to the rope with both hands. So they got me inboard with merely a dash of saltwater to season my venture.

The canoe wore off sharply and I turned to wave good-bye to Pedro and the paddlers. Then a bunch of the old Scarboro's fo'castle hands were about me. Tom Anderly pushed through the group and grabbed my hand.

"Here ye be, ye blamed young scamp!" he roared. "Leavin' Mr. Gibson an' me in the lurch in Buenos Ayres."

"And ye missed some of the greatest whalin' ye ever see," burst in the stroke oar of our old boat. "We got smashed up complete once and lost boat and every bit of gear. Nobody bad hurt, however."

Within the next few moments I heard a deal of news. How many whales the Scarboro had butchered since I had left for Buenos Ayres (and despite Mr. Bobbin's croaking the old bark already had half a cargo in her tanks); how long it had taken Bill Rudd and his crew to patch up the hole the bull whale had smashed in the bark's side; about the gale they had run into which had carried away some of the top gear and much canvas; and what the crew had done during the week or more they had been in port at Buenos Ayres.

Then Ben Gibson came off duty and called me aft. "Awful glad to see you, Webb," he declared. "I'm fit as a fiddle now. Want you in my boat again. We took on a lout at Buenos Ayres, who's had your berth; but he isn't worth a hang in the boat. You're going to finish out the cruise, aren't you?"

"I don't expect to, sir," I returned. "I would have been home long ago if I had been wise. What I came down here for panned out nothing at all."

"Well, Captain Hi will be glad to have you finish out the cruise, I don't doubt. You better go below and see him," said the second mate.

Mr. Robbins shook hands with me before I went below and welcomed me aboard. "We're going to make money in the old Scarboro this v'y'ge, Webb," he said. "You'd better stick to the bark. Captain Hi is going to discharge ile here at Punta Arenas and go into the Pacific with clean tanks."

And so the skipper told me when I descended to the tiny chart room. There would be a tramp freightship with a half cargo at Punta Arenas, he said, and it had empty tanks aboard. All that was needed was to pump the oil from the bark into the tramp's tanks.