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I swung around it I was travelin' at a good clip and come facin' up an old she b'ar which riz up on her hind laigs an' said: 'How-d'-do, Jerry Todd! jest as plain as ever a bear spoke in its e-tar-nal life!
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.
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.
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 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?"
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.
"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.
"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.
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.
"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."
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