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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.
And if one o' them Injun's sick, or the like, he treats 'em like a sure-'nough hospital sawbones. "Then he is a physician?" I asked suddenly. "I reckon he's most anything that a man kin l'arn out o' books," declared Captain Tugg. "He sent by me to Buenos Ayres here, first trip I made after we'd gone partners in the animal biz, for the greatest old outfit of drugs and the like you ever see.
The routine duties of the schooner kept me at work, however, for I tried to earn my sixteen a month. Tugg was a good navigator himself. He handled his schooner like a professional yachtsman. Captain Rogers would have admired the man, for he was another skipper who did not believe in lying hove to no matter how hard the wind blew.
And I had been told, often enough, that I had my father's stature and his very tone of voice and manner of speaking! But hold on! there was another way to make connection between the flying strands of this seemingly absurd story. I turned to Captain Tugg calmly. "By the way, sir," I said, "do you ever run around to Santiago?" "Valparaiso, you mean, son?" he returned. "That's the seaport."
Them scamps that waylaid us last night will scatter the news of that fireworks show throughout ten townships, and don't you forgit it. Jest because Adoniram Tugg can show 'em something new ev'ry time is what's kept his head on his shoulders for fifteen years." "Goodness! they're not head-hunters?" said I. "No.
It was a tug, now I tell you! but we got the whale to the Sea Spell after a while. I expected to see the spick and span schooner all messed up with try-out works, and grease, and smoke. It disgusted me that the Yankee skipper should be so sharp after the Almighty Dollar. But I didn't yet know Captain Adoniram Tugg.
"Was that letter addressed to Tom Anderly, at the office of Radnor & Blunt, in New York a firm of shipping merchants?" "You win!" ejaculated Captain Tugg. "I memorized that address. Have to admit I've always been cur'ous about the Professor. You know him?" "No, sir," I said. "But I believe there's a man here in town who does.
"You've the makin's of a smart sailor in you I can see that," pursued the Captain. "And you say you've begun studying navigation?" "I picked up some aboard the Scarboro, listening to Captain Hi and Ben Gibson." "We'll make a mate of you in a year or two," said Captain Tugg, confidently. But that speech shocked me. I had no intention of following the sea a year or two.
Tugg turned to me again, drawling just the same as usual: "Keep a thing seven year, they say, and it's bound to come handy, no matter what it is. I bought a miscellaneous lot o' truck out o' a seaside store thar in Buenos Ayres because there was a right good chronometer went with the lot. Ah! that's the box, Pedro. Rip it open but have a care.
"Where are you going from here when your Sea Spell sails, Captain Tugg?" I asked the Yankee animal collector. "Goin' to make the Straits," drawled he. "Goin' right back to headquarters for a bit. Mebbe we'll keep the old schooner in commission I'm taking down light cargo for headquarters now. But I leave most of the actual snarin' and trappin' of the critters to the Injuns and to the Professor.
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