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Updated: May 29, 2025
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.
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.
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.
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."
So that settled the mystery of the man I had come clear down here to the Straits of Magellan to find the man whom Captain Adoniram Tugg knew as Professor Vose and who had met so terrible an end when the savages had destroyed Tugg's headquarters.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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