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If they couldn't get a boat on the Neck side of the harbor in which to go out to the Wavecrest, they might come across from the town side and do her some damage. Mother had come down to dinner and we had one of our old-fashioned, homey meals, followed by a pleasant hour in the drawing-room, where she played and sang for me.
I thought when I opened my eyes: "Here they are! Now for some fun." I supposed they would not have seen my light and I was going to put my head out of the cabin and scare them before they could do the Wavecrest any harm. But as it proved, the bumping of the small boat against the sloop did not announce the arrival of the enemy.
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.
All it did when he shook it off his hook in disgust was to swell up like a toy balloon and emit an objective grunt whenever it was poked. Funny, but these "grunters" always reminded me of Paul. Now, at my suggestion, my cousin broke into another tirade of abuse of the Wavecrest, and what he termed my carelessness.
The waves did not break about the Wavecrest, for she was still within the charmed circle of oily calmness supplied by the dead whale. At some distance, however, the waves were tossed about most tempestuously. I could see the bark from bow to stern, for she lay broadside to me.
For some reason I had not seen the bulk of this strange apparition before and at first I was sure it was the turtle-turned hulk of a wreck. But as the Wavecrest sped on, bringing me nearer and nearer to the object, I saw that I must be wrong. It was not shaped like a ship's hull although it was black and clumsy enough. But immediately about it the waves seemed to be calm.
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? 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.
Of course, I was thankful that I had been picked up; yet if the weather settled I might have safely made my way back home in the Wavecrest. And it was easy to see that the skipper of the Scarboro considered the sloop his property in return for taking me aboard. The lanky captain of the whale ship was not a person to argue with. I knew it would be useless to bandy words with him.
Ham, too, had sounded the ne'er-do-wells who were my cousin's companions, and after the house on the Neck was closed for the season, and the Downeses had departed with my mother for Darringford House, the old coachman had obtained a confession from the young scoundrels to the effect that they had helped Paul nail me into my cabin and had seen him cut the Wavecrest adrift.
But his money could bribe such fellows as I had seen him with that very day, to sink the Wavecrest, or even to assault me in the dark. It would be a joke on Paul so I thought if he or his friends should sneak out to the sloop where she was moored, intending to do her some harm, and find me there all ready for such a visitation.
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