I felt like a beleaguered general who had just opened communication with his reinforcements, when I again found myself holding intercourse, even by letter, with my father. It seemed as though a new life had begun for me. My father was happy, and so was I. He declared that he should join me as soon as his business would allow him to leave England; and that when he found me, as he should wherever I wandered, he never would leave me again.
My father alluded at considerable length to "his best and truest friend," Mr. Tiffany. He had written to him, and desired him to take an interest in my affairs if he thought I needed any assistance, either with money or counsel. This was a partial explanation of the conduct of Mr. Tiffany; but he was a very strange man because he said nothing to me about his instructions from my father.
Before I had finished reading the rest of my letters, Washburn came into the room; but when he saw I was engaged, he began to retire. I asked him to remain. He was my ever-faithful friend. He had fathomed the conspiracy against me, and I valued his counsel more than that of any other person. He had my fullest confidence, though he never sought to know my business.
I related to him all the incidents of my visit to the city, including a full account of my adventures with the Boomsbys and the other snake. I need not say that he was intensely interested.
"That Boomsby ought to be hung!" he exclaimed, as soon as I had finished my story.
"Perhaps not," I replied, giving the captain's explanation of the presence of the snake in the closet.
"I should like to follow that lodger's history, if Captain Boomsby had any such person in his house, which I do not believe," added the mate. "When I go on shore I will try to find out whether or not he had any lodger, and I think I can get at it."
"It is hardly worth the trouble," I replied.
"I think it is. For months we have been satisfied that this villain means you harm; but we have never been able to prove anything," said Washburn, with energy. "It is time to quit fooling with such matters. If he did not mean to sink the Sylvania for your benefit, he never meant anything in his life; but he explained it away, and everybody that knows anything about it, except you and I, believes that the accident was simply the result of his drunken condition on that morning. It is time to prove some of these things."
"I have no objection to having them proved."