“Great gracious,� gasped Jack, as he concluded this effort which he recognized as being Cap’n Toby’s version of the song of Captain Kidd, “my uncle must have gone crazy. Whoever heard of such a thing. Off on a treasure hunt at his age, and with a wooden leg. Well, I guess the only thing for me to do is to see Captain Dennis at once. It may not be too late to stop this insane trip, wherever it is to.�
The young wireless man was given a warm greeting at Captain Dennis’s cozy home in Greenwich Village that evening by the captain’s pretty daughter, Helen. Jack found her just as charming as ever and was not sorry when she informed him that the captain would not be back from his work on the docks for an hour or more. Helen was all sympathy about Jack’s wound, the scar of which still showed. They had read all about it in the papers, she said, with a pretty blush. It only seemed a few minutes to Jack, instead of the hour and a half it actually was, before Captain Dennis came in. He greeted Jack heartily but would not hear of discussing Uncle Toby’s strange freak till after supper. Then, when he had lit his pipe, he told Jack what he knew of the matter.
It appeared, according to what Captain Dennis knew, that soon after Jack had sailed on the Cambodian, a battered old mariner appeared at the Venus and asked for Captain Toby. This was the Captain Walters referred to in the strange letter Jack had received in Rotterdam.
Captain Walters, so it seemed, was an old whaling captain who had known Captain Toby many years before. He had been shipwrecked in the Arctic on his last voyage and after incredible hardships at last got back to America. But he was a mere shell of a man who sought out Captain Toby to see if that veteran had any remedies that would make him a well man and fit him to make up an expedition for some vague treasure he knew of in the land of ice.
But all Captain Toby’s skill proved of no avail, and Captain Walters shortly set out on his last voyage. But before he died he confided to Uncle Toby full details of the location of the treasure and other important data. Armed with this, Captain Toby had succeeded in interesting a firm of capitalists in the venture, and a week before, on a trim schooner, with a picked crew, had sailed for the Arctic regions. That was all Captain Dennis knew, but that the ancient mariner appeared beside himself with dreams of wealth, and said that when he returned he would be a millionaire.
“And there you have the story, my boy,� said Captain Dennis, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, “and a more crack-brained, crazy cruise I never heard tell of, asking your pardon, because he’s your uncle.�
Jack engaged a cheap room for the remainder of his stay in New York, but he spent much of his time at the Dennis’s. One day on the street he encountered Travis, the operator on the ship on which he had voyaged home. Travis had much to tell him. The Cambodian had arrived a week late, after a desperate mutiny, in which Captain Briggs was almost mortally wounded.
Her entire crew was under arrest. But Travis had something else to say that interested Jack a great deal.
“See here,� said Jack’s friend, “you haven’t got another berth yet.�
Jack shock his head rather disconsolately.