Of myself, it becomes me not to say very much. I was just turned twenty-one: six feet high: and vanity whispered, in confirmation of my sister’s energetic and oft-repeated assertions, a trifle more than moderately good-looking. I was an only son (as my sister was an only daughter), and I had received my education at the Royal Naval School at Greenwich, with the understanding that I was to join my father on its completion, when he would continue and finish what is there so well begun, thus making me “every inch a sailor.”
On leaving school I joined my father (who was master and part owner of a fine dashing clipper), in the capacity of midshipman, and went some six or seven voyages with him: on the last of which, or rather a few days after its termination, I was seized with a violent attack of rheumatic fever, from which I had not recovered sufficiently to rejoin the ship by the time that she was once more ready for sea. I was consequently left at home under Ada’s care (my dear mother had been dead some years), to recover at leisure, and amuse myself as well as I could, until another voyage should be accomplished, and an opportunity once more offered for me to repossess myself of my quarters in the old familiar berth. That opportunity never arrived, for at the time my story opens, my father had been two years “missing.” He sailed from Canton with the first cargo of the new season’s teas, and from the moment that the good ship disappeared seaward she had never been heard of; not the faintest trace of a clue to the mystery of her fate having, so far, been discovered.
Bob Trunnion was a middle-aged man, of medium stature, great personal strength, and no very marked pretensions to beauty; but he was as thorough an old sea-dog as ever looked upon salt water. His visage was burnt to a deep brick-red by years of exposure to all sorts of weather; and his hair and beard, which had once been brown, were now changed to the hue of old oakum by the same process, except where, here and there, a slight sprinkling of grey discovered itself. He had been a sailor almost all his life; having “crept in through the hawse-pipe” when he was only twelve years old; since when, by close application, and perseverance, he had gradually worked his way aft to the quarter-deck. He joined my father’s ship as second mate, on the same voyage as I did, and on the following voyage took the chief mate’s, berth, in place of a man whom my father was compelled to discharge for confirmed drunkenness.
The last time that my poor father passed down Channel, outward-bound, Bob had the misfortune (as we thought it then), to fall off the poop and break his arm. It was what the surgeons call a compound fracture, and certainly looked to be a very ugly one; so, as the ship happened at the time to be off Saint Alban’s Head, my father ran into Weymouth roads, and sent Bob ashore to our house to be cured, and to bear me company; shipping in his stead the second mate, and picking up a new second mate somewhere about the town.
Thus it happened that Bob and I, old shipmates as we were, happened to be both away from our ship when her mysterious fate overtook her. As soon as we were both recovered, we sought and obtained berths, always in the same ship, for short voyages; returning home about once in every six weeks or two months, with the hope of hearing either that my father had returned, or that some news had arrived of him. For the last twelve months we had abandoned the former hope, but the latter would probably be many years before it finally took its flight.
This introduction and explanation are necessary to the understanding of what is to follow; and now, having fairly weathered them both, we may take up the thread of the story, and follow it out to the end without further interruption.
I have already said that I took an early opportunity to give Bob a detailed account of the Spaniard’s revelation to me. This was on the evening of the day on which we laid the poor fellow in his grave; and I told my story while we and my sister were seated comfortably round the fire after tea, with the curtains drawn close, and everything made snug for the night.
Bob listened with the utmost attention to my story (as did also my sister), occasionally requesting me to “say that again,” as some point in the narrative was reached which he wished to bear particularly in mind; and when I had finished he sat for some time staring meditatively between the bars of the grate.
At length, “Well, Harry, my lad, what do you intend to do?” said he.