Chapter 14

IN WHICH TOM ANDERLY RELATES A STORY THAT AROUSES MY INTEREST

Captain Rogers was not a harsh man, but he was a stern disciplinarian. That he could not change the course of his ship to land me in some port, or to put me aboard a homeward bound vessel, is not to be wondered at. He had both his owners and his crew to think of. I was thankful, when I saw the week's weather that followed my boarding the Scarboro, that I had been saved from further battling with the elements in the sloop.

Ben Gibson advised me to write fully of my situation and prospects and have the letter, or letters, ready to put aboard any mail-carrying ship we might meet. A steamship bound for the Cape of Good Hope, even, would get a letter to Bolderhead, via London, before I could get back myself from any South American port that the Scarboro might be obliged to touch at.

I knew, however, that the whaling bark was not likely to touch at any port unless she suffered seriously from the gales. Whaling skippers are not likely to trust their crews in port, for the possible three year term of shipment stretches out into an unendurable vista in the mind of the imprisoned sailor.

For that is what a sailor is--a prisoner. As the great Samuel Johnson declared, a sailor is worse off than a man in jail, for the sailor is not only a prisoner, but he is in danger all of the time! However, the prospect of the danger and hardship of the seafarer's life had never troubled me. I must admit that I was delighted to turn to with the captain's watch (that was Ben Gibson's watch) and take up the duties of a foremast hand upon the Scarboro. I wrote the letters as I was advised. I wrote to my mother, of course, to Ham Mayberry, and last of all, and more particularly, to Lawyer Hounsditch.

To the latter gentleman I explained all I feared regarding Mr. Chester Downes and his machinations. To Ham I told the particulars of my having been swept out to sea and instructed him to find my mooring rope and save it, with its cut end for evidence; and if possible to learn who had helped Paul Downes, my cousin, cut me adrift and nail me in the cabin of the Wavecrest. To my mother I wrote cheerfully and asked her to have money sent me at Buenos Ayres, as that might be a port the Scarboro would touch at, or a port I could reach if I left the whaleship.

I cannot say that I was continually worried by my state aboard the whaler. What boy would not have delighted in being thus thrust into the midst of the very life and work he had so longed to follow? I could not but feel that it was _meant_ for me to be a sailor, after all.

The Webbs had been seafaring folk, time out of mind. My father's father had tried to keep his own son off the water by giving him a college education and making a doctor of him. But the moment my father was sure of his sheepskin, he had looked about for a chance to go as surgeon on a deep water ship, and had gone voyage after voyage until his marriage.

Inside of a fortnight Captain Rogers had complimented me on my work and manner, and Mr. Robbins, the mate, said I was worth my salt-horse and hardbread. Of course while on duty Ben Gibson, the young second mate, and I must of necessity hold to "quarterdeck etiquette;" he was "Mr. Gibson" and I was "Webb." We were punctilious indeed about these niceties of address. Off duty, however, we were two boys together, and rather inclined to sky-lark.

The other close friend that I made aboard the Scarboro during the first few days of the voyage, was old Tom Anderly. He was the bewhiskered old barnacle who had welcomed the possibility of getting oil in the bark's tanks from the dead whale, when I had first come aboard.

Anderly was a boat-steerer, an old sea dog who had sailed oft and again with the skipper, and who had lanced more whales than any other half dozen men aboard. Being in old Tom's watch I grew soon familiar with him; and from the beginning I saw that the old seaman took more than a common interest in me.

The old man was full of stories of whale fishing and other experiences at sea. But it was not his fund of information, or his tales, that first of all interested me in Tom Anderly. I had told nobody--not even Ben Gibson--about the actual event of my being swept out to sea from Bolderhead, nor had I said a word about my father. The fact that he had been a sea-going physician would not help me hold my own with the crew of the Scarboro. At sea, according to the homely old saw, "every tub must stand on its own bottom."

"So you come from Bolderhead, do you?" quoth Tom to me, one day when we were lounging together forward of the capstan, and he was mending his pipe.

"That's where we live in the summer," I admitted.

"Jest summer visitors, are ye?"

"Well, my mother has a house there."

"Yes. Ye ain't a native, though, eh?" and before I could reply to this, he continued: "I been studying about Bolderhead ever since you come aboard. There was something curious happened at Bolderhead--or just off the inlet--and it's all come back to me now."

"What was it?" I asked, idly.

"Well, it's quite a yarn," he said, wagging his head. "I was running in the old hooker, Sally Smith, from Portland to New York. She carted stone. There warn't but five of us aboard, includin' the cap'n and the cook. But our freight warn't perishable," and he chuckled, "so speed didn't enter into our calculations. One day there come up a smother of fog as we was just off Bolderhead Neck. We'd run some in-shore. It fell a dead calm--one o' them still, creepy times when you can hear sheep bells and dinner horns for miles and miles.

"Well, sir! we lay there in this smother of fog and all of a suddent we heard somebody hootin'. Cap he halloaed back. 'Blow yer scare!' sings out the same faint voice. 'Keep it blowin'.'

"'There's somebody out yon tryin' to make the Sally,' says the Cap'n. I stepped on the tread of the siren and kept her blattin' now and then and, after some minutes, we heard a splashin' alongside and there was a man swimming in the sea."

"He had swum out from shore?" I asked, just to keep the conversation going. I wasn't really interested.

"No. His boat had begun leaking badly. It was too heavy to turn over, and before it sank he slipped into the sea and made for us. He had seen us before the fog shut down, and knew that we were becalmed. He'd just tied his shoes about his neck by the lacings and swum out with every rag of clothes on him--'cept his hat."

"And why did he swim for your craft instead of to shore?"

"Said he was nearer the Sally when his boat took in so much water. And the tide _was_ running out, no doubt. But it always did seem queer to me," continued Tom.

"What was queer?" I asked the question without the slightest eagerness--indeed, I really was not interested much in what the old sailor was saying.

"Queer that such a smart-appearin', intelligent gent should have got himself in such a fix."

"As how?"

"To set sail in such a leaky old tub."

"Oh!"

"And then, when he found she was sinking under him not to make for the shore."

"What became of him?" I asked.

"He went to New York with us. There he stepped ashore and I ain't never seen him since--and only heard of him once, an' that was ten years or so afterward----"

"Hullo!" I cried, suddenly waking up. "When did all this happen, Tom?"

"When did what happen?"

"This man swimming aboard your schooner?"

"Why, nigh as I can remember, it must be fourteen or fifteen years ago--come next spring. It was in April, after the weather was right smart warm. Otherwise he wouldn't have swum so far, I bet ye!"

My voice, I knew, had suddenly become husky. I was startled, though I don't know why I should have felt so strangely as I reviewed this tale he had told.

"What was his name, Tom?" I asked.

"The name of the feller I was tellin' you of?"

"Yes."

"Carver."

"How d'you know it was?"

"Why, he said so!" exclaimed Tom. "A man ought to know his own name, oughtn't he?"

"He should--yes."

"Well!"

"But did he have any way of proving his name to be Carver?"

"Pshaw! the Cap'n never axed him to prove it. Why for should he lie about it? He worked his way to New York and all he got was his grub for it. I let him have an old pilot coat of mine, he having only a thin jacket on him. He agreed to pay me two dollars for it. And he was jest as honest as they make 'em."

"He paid you?"

"He sartinly did," said old Tom, wagging his head. "A feller who would be as good as his word in that particular wouldn't lie about his name, would he?"

"You said you heard from him ten years after?" I asked, without trying to answer Tom's query.

"Well--yes--it was ten years. But I guess the letter had been lying there in the office of Radnor & Blunt--them's the folks we dealt with on the Sally Smith--for a long time. I had left the Sally the year after and only just by chance went into the office when I was in New York. The chief clerk he passed me over a letter. In it was a two-dollar bill and a line saying it was for the coat."

"And it had been there waiting for you for some time?"

"'Twas as yellow as saffron. They didn't know where I lived when I was to home. And I had been 'round the world in the Scarboro, too."

"And the letter was from Bolderhead?" I asked, slowly.

"No. That was the funny part of it," said Tom.

I awoke again and once more felt a thrill of excitement in my veins. I watched the old fellow jealously.

"Didn't the man--this Carver--belong in Bolderhead?"

"So I supposed. But the letter come from foreign parts."

"Where?" I asked.

"'Twas from Santiago, Chili."

"Then he had not gone back to Bolderhead?" I stammered.

"Bless ye, lad! how do I know? I only know he sent the money from Chili. He was something of a mystery, that feller, I allow. Ever heard tell of him in Bolderhead? Are there any Carvers there?"

"It's a mighty small town along the New England coast in which there are no Carvers," I replied.

"Now, ain't that a fact? They're a spraddled out family, I do allow," said Tom.

"What did this man look like?" I asked, and I was still eager--I could scarcely have told why.

There was an enlarged crayon picture of my father in my bedroom at home. When he died my mother only had a cheap little tintype of him. I don't suppose the crayon portrait looked much like Dr. Webb. Certainly there was little in Tom Anderly's description to connect the strange man rescued out of the sea with the portrait of my father. Yet the circumstances, the time of the happening, and the suspicions that had been roused in my mind by Paul Downes and his father, all dovetailed together and troubled me.

Even Ham Mayberry, who scoffed at the idea that my father had made way with himself, admitted that had Dr. Webb lived my mother and I could never have enjoyed Grandfather Darringford's money. I could never believe that my father had been wicked enough to commit suicide. But, suppose he had merely slipped away from us--gone out of our lives entirely--with the intention of putting his wife and child in a prosperous position?

It was romantic, I suppose. To the perfectly sane and hard-headed such a suspicion would seem utterly ridiculous. But the longer I thought over Tom Anderly's story--the more I allowed my imagination to roam--the more possible the idea seemed. Ham had said my father was not a money-making man. He was in financial difficulties, too. Grandfather had died and there was a heap of money just beyond my mother's grasp. My father had become a stumbling-block in her path--in my path. He it was who kept us from enjoying wealth.

The cruelty of my grandfather in arranging such a situation filled me with anger when I contemplated it. What could my father think but that, if he were out of the way, it would be far, far better for his wife and child?

I could not believe, for an instant, that Dr. Webb would have committed the crime of self-destruction. But in my then romantic state of mind, what more easily believed than that he had deliberately removed himself out of our lives--and in a way to make it appear that he was dead?

As we did, he knew we would at once enter into the enjoyment of the wealth left by old Mr. Darringford. There would be no material suffering caused by his dropping out of sight. I faced the matter with more coolness and a better understanding than most boys of my age possess, because of my knowing my mother's nature so well. Take my own sudden disappearance, for instance. I knew well she would be quite overwhelmed at first; but if good Dr. Eldridge brought her out of it all right, and she had somebody to turn to and depend upon for comfort and encouragement, she would sustain my mysterious absence very well indeed.

And my father must have known her character much better than I did! Undoubtedly it had been very hard for mother to endure the cramped circumstances of those first two years of her married life. It must have been a great deal harder for Dr. Webb to bear it, knowing that she suffered for lack of the luxuries and ease to which she had been used.

I could imagine that the situation when my grandfather died and left his peculiar will, would have pretty near maddened Dr. Webb. It would not be strange if he contemplated self-destruction as a means of putting my mother and myself positively beyond the reach of poverty. He had rowed out to White Rock. He had left the old watch--I had the heirloom in my pocket now--for the boy who was yet to grow up and bear his name. The fog and the Sally Smith had appeared together and offered him means of escape.

It would be fifteen years the coming spring that my father had disappeared. Tom Anderly had hit the time near enough. Had there been any man named Carver who had suffered such an accident off Bolderhead Neck as the old seaman told of, I would have heard the particulars, knocking about among the Bolderhead docks as I had for years.

The story seemed conclusive. I had never for a moment believed that my father had wickedly made way with himself. But that he was alive--that he had gone out into the world, possibly with the hope of finding a fortune and sometime coming back to mother and me with a pocketful of money--Yes! I could believe that, and I _did_ believe it with all my heart!