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Of all the people who worked for mother about the Bolderhead cottage, I knew that Ham would take my part against the Downeses. Ham and I were old cronies. And I believed that I could thank Ham for the butler's espousal of my cause on this present occasion. Ham had a deal of influence with the other servants, having been with us before mother was willed the great Darringford property.
My mother's summer home was built upon the highest point of Bolderhead Neck and commanded a view of both the ocean and the inlet, or harbor, around which Old Bolderhead was built. My mother's early life had not been spent near the water; her people dwelt inland. My maternal grandfather owned half a township and was a very influential man.
He was her confidant in business matters, too. Being brought up in the same inland town together, my cousin Paul and I naturally saw a good deal of each other. Frankly I saw altogether too much of him and I told my mother so. But Mr. Downes was all the time coming to the house especially to the Bolderhead cottage and bringing Paul with him.
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. 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.
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.
And while thus engaged I made a discovery that to say the least startled me. Dragging over the bows of the Wavecrest was the cable by which she had been moored in Bolderhead Harbor. I had never chanced to draw it aboard. Now I did so. It was only a bit, some three or four feet long.
Yes! there was the beacon at the extreme point of Bolderhead Neck it was just abreast of me as I stood at last upon the sloop's unsteady deck. I leaped down into the cockpit and quickly lowered the centerboard. Almost at once the Wavecrest began to ride more evenly.
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.
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.
"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.
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