And how much more regarding his brother's disappearance did Cap'n
Amazon know than the neighbors or herself? In her room Louise sat and
faced the problem. She deliberated upon each incident connected with
Cap'n Abe's departure as she knew them.
From almost the first moment of her arrival at the store on the Shell
Road, the storekeeper had announced the expected arrival of Cap'n
Amazon and his own departure for a sea voyage if his brother would
undertake the conduct of the store.
The incidents of the night of Cap'n Amazon's coming and of Cap'n Abe's departure seemed reasonable enough. Here had arisen the opportunity long desired by the Shell Road storekeeper. His brother would remain to look out for his business while he could go seafaring. Cap'n Amazon knew just the craft for the storekeeper to sail in, clearing from the port of Boston within a few hours.
There was not much margin of time for Cap'n Abe to make his preparations. Perry Baker was at hand with Louise's trunks, and the storekeeper had sent off his chest, supposedly filled with an outfit for use at sea. Just what he had intended to do with useless clothing and a hod of bricks it was impossible to understand.
Cap'n Abe had come to her bedroom door to bid Louise good-bye, and she had seen him depart in the fog just at dawn. Yet nobody had observed him at the railroad station and he had not called for the chest at the Boston express office.
The chest! That was the apex of the mystery. Never in this world had Cap'n Abe intended to take the chest with him to sea—or wherever else he had it in his mind to go.
Nor was the chest intended to be returned to the store until Cap'n Abe himself came back from his mysterious journey. The fact that Perry Baker had shipped it in his own name instead of that of the owner had brought about this unexpected incident.
Washy Gallup's gossip—his doubt regarding Cap'n Abe's shipping on a sea voyage—now came home to Louise with force. Washy suggested that the storekeeper was afraid of the sea; that in all his years at Cardhaven he had never been known to venture out of the quiet waters of the bay.
To the girl's mind, too, came the remembrance of that talk she had had with Cap'n Abe on the evening of her arrival at the store. Was there something he had said then that explained this mystery?
He had told her of the wreck of the Bravo and the drowning of Captain Joshua Silt, his father, in sight of his mother's window. She had been powerfully affected by that awful tragedy; this could not be doubted.