“And now, gents,” said the skipper, when we had satisfactorily arranged the important and rather delicate matter referring to the improvement of his speech and deportment, “I’m sorter hankerin’ to have a talk with you both about that there letter I was tellin’ you of a while ago—the letter that was handed to me just as we was makin’ a start from Baltimore, and that I forgot all about until we was fairly out to sea.
“This here letter told me— But stop a bit; if I want you to understand the thing properly, and I surely do, I guess I’ll have to give you the whole history of it from the very beginnin’. Along about three months ago, just after I’d got home from my last v’yage, I happened to have a bit of business to attend to that called for a trip over to New York; and when I’d got through with what I had to do, the fancy took me to stay over for a day or two and have a look round, me not havin’ been in New York for quite a number of years before, you’ll understand. And while I was doin’ my lookin’ around I must needs go nosin’, like a fool, down into the Bowery. And down there I runs up agin a ragged skeleton that looks me hard in the face and hails me with: ‘Hello, Eph Brown, what cheer? Blamed if you ain’t the very chap that I’ve been most wantin’ to see.’
“I guess I was pretty well struck of a heap, for I didn’t reckernise the chap from Adam; all I noticed was that he didn’t seem to ha’ had a bath since his mother give him one as a baby, that he was dressed in clo’es that ought by rights to have belonged to a scarecrow, that he was that thin and cadaverous he might have just escaped from the Morgue, and that his breath was reekin’ of cheap whisky.
“‘Now, who in Tom Hawkins may you be?’ says I; for, you see, the feller knowed my name all right, yet, seein’ where we was, and what the man looked like, I sorter suspicioned that he wasn’t exactly square, and was tryin’ to get at me.
“‘What!’ he says; ‘d’ye mean to say as ye don’t remember me—Abe Johnson—what used to play with yer in the old days when we was boys together away in dear old Nantucket?’—Nantucket, you’ll understand, gents, bein’ the place where I was born.
“‘No,’ says I, ‘I don’t, and that’s the cold, solid truth. But if you’re really Abe Johnson you’ll remember the names of a few people in Nantucket, and a few of the things that we done together. Where, f’r instance, did I live when you knew me?’
“Well, he told me where I lived, give me the names of a lot of people that we both used to know, and reminded me of a good many things that we done together that I’d clean forgot all about until he mentioned ’em. Oh yes, he was Abe, sure; and when he see that he’d satisfied me upon that p’int, he told me a real downright pitiful tale, and struck me for ten dollars. He was right away down on his luck, he said; and I guess he was speakin’ the truth, if looks went for anything.
“Now, Abe never had amounted to much when I knew him; he was just a low-down, ornery cuss every way that you looked at him. But I was al’ays a bit tender-hearted, and I sorter pitied the feller; so a’ter I passed over the ten-spot to him I took him into a restyrong and filled him up with a good square meal. And while we was eatin’ he told me a long yarn about what he’d been doin’; how he’d tried fust one thing and then another, and had finally took to the sea. And it seemed that his bad luck had follered him there, for he’d ended up by bein’ shipwrecked upon one of them uncharted reefs that you runs up agin sometimes in the Pacific, he bein’ the only survivor out of the whole crowd. If he was tellin’ me the truth he must ha’ had a pretty rough time on that reef, for he described it as bein’ as bare as the back of your hand, with nothin’ to eat but birds’ eggs and clams, and only a small, tricklin’ stream of brackish, scarcely drinkable water to quench his thirst with. And he was on that there reef five solid months afore a whaler comed along and, seein’ his signals, took him off, and later transferred him to another ship that brought him home.
“Now when Abe had got this far with his yarn he begun to get mysterious, sunk his voice to a whisper, and asked if he could trust me. I told him that he best knew whether he could or not, and that anyway, if the thing was a secret, I didn’t want to hear anything about it.
“‘Ah, but,’ says he, ‘there’s a fortune in it—a fortune for both of us, Eph, if I can only trust you.’