The Sylvania had come all the way from Lake St. Clair, and it was expected that she would return there. The steam-yacht was my property, so far as a minor could hold property. She had been presented to me by the head of a wealthy Western family for a valuable service I had rendered. I had cruised in the Great Lakes in her, and had had some exciting adventures on board.
I had spent my earliest days in the poor-house of a Maine town, from which a down-east skipper had taken me for the work I could do. But I was afterwards found near Lake St. Clair by my father, after a long and diligent search. But he had been obliged to leave me in charge of Mr. Brickland, my ever faithful friend and guardian, while he went to England to attend to some family affairs. He left property enough to make me independent for life, but it had all been lost by a fire, and I had nothing but the Sylvania.
The steam-yacht afforded me an abundant support while she was under charter to my cousin. Owen was the next heir to me of my father's title of baronet and his large estate. One Pike Carrington, my father's solicitor, had persuaded my cousin to enter into some vague conspiracy to "get rid of me in some manner." But, with the aid of Washburn, I had discovered the plot; and having the good fortune to save Owen's life in a storm, before he was fairly committed to the conspiracy, he had become my fast friend.
My cousin's mother was very rich, and it appeared that she gave him money without stint or limit. Carrington had bought the sister yacht of the Sylvania, the Islander, which was to take part in the conspiracy against me, and in which the solicitor had followed the Sylvania to Florida. He had employed Captain Parker Boomsby, the down-east skipper, then settled in Michigan, to command her, and to assist in carrying out his plan. One feature of the scheme was to make me believe that my father was dead; and for months I did believe it. Captain Boomsby claimed that I had been "bound out" to him till I was twenty-one; and he insisted upon the possession of my person and my property as much as though I had been his slave. My father had made an arrangement with him by which he had abandoned all his interest in me, but at the reported death of my father, Carrington had induced him to assert his claim again.
Captain Boomsby had followed me to Florida in the Islander, with the solicitor as his passenger. The former had evidently undertaken "to get rid of me;" but, instead of doing this, he had sacrificed the solicitor. Both he and the lawyer had become hard drinkers, and in the Captain's attempt to wreck me, he had sunk the Islander and drowned his employer. I judged that this would be the end of the conspiracy; and so it was, so far as my cousin Owen and the solicitor were concerned, but not on the part of Captain Boomsby.
I had left my "ancient enemy," as I had a right to regard Captain Boomsby, at Jacksonville when we sailed for the West Indies. I knew that his experiment of making money in Michigan had been a failure, and that he was looking for a more hopeful field of operations in some other section of the country. One of his men told me that he intended to run the Sylvania on the St. Johns River as a passenger boat, and that he felt sure of obtaining possession of her, because, he asserted, he was the rightful owner of her. The paper he had signed was destroyed with the rest of my valuables.
As the steam-yacht approached the coast of Florida I did not even think of my ancient enemy. I had left him in Jacksonville, where he was drinking all he could carry, every day. He was terribly bitter and revengeful towards me; for though my father had paid him a considerable sum of money to appease him, rather than to satisfy any just claim he had upon me, he could never be content until he obtained all that could be had, either by fair means or by foul. There was no more principle in him than there was in a paving-stone.
"That is St. Augustine Light," I continued. "There can be no mistake about it, for there is not another light within thirty-five miles of it; and we could not have gone so wide of the mark as that."
"You are right, Captain Alick, as you always are," laughed the mate.
"None of that, Bob! You know as well as the next fellow that I am not always right; I wish I were. How was it about going into St. George?" I replied.