His crew was partly made up of South American half-breeds, and the bulk of the crew of the steamship on which the Blakes had sailed, so long before, from New York.
The captain brought letters for various people from a trading station far up a tributary of the Amazon. Had not a sharp reporter, nosing about for news on the Baltimore docks, gotten into conversation with Captain Speed, it is likely that the newspapers would never have obtained the full story of the loss of the steamship in question.
She had burned only a few hundred miles off the mouth of the Amazon. It was rough weather at the time and two of the boats' crews and most of the passengers had lost their lives before the Ethelina came loafing along and had taken the remainder of the survivors aboard.
The Ethelina was bound for an up-river station. She had no reason for touching at Para or any other big city of Brazil. She kept right on her course, and her course chanced to be the route to be followed by Mr. and Mrs. Blake, who were among the few passengers rescued.
The old hooker sailed up the Amazon, and several hundred miles up the tributary on which was situated the town of Samratam, which was the Blakes' goal.
The Blakes left letters for the captain of the Ethelina to bring back to civilization. Captain Speed had not considered it necessary to hurry these letters along.
He had waited to bring them himself, to mail at Baltimore. Good news surely had traveled slowly in this case. Almost at the time the old schooner was being warped into her dock at Baltimore, Mr. and Mrs. Blake, in good health, expected to leave Samratam for the United States!
The letters came in good time to Clinton, and to Rockledge School. Dr. Raymond sat before his great, flat-topped desk one warm May morning staring at a letter written on thin notepaper, with a packet of similar letters, wrapped in an oiled-paper wrapper, before him on the desk.
Somehow his spectacles were clouded, and he had to take them off and wipe them twice before he could finish reading the business-like lines.
The second time he wiped the glasses and set them astride his big nose, he saw a small figure standing in the open doorway.