All right, there isn’t much more. We had no guess how long the man had been in the boat or whether he had starved or what. He might have been dead several days, I thought. The life boat was awash. There was the name of some ship or other on the bows, but the boat had been painted since the name was printed there, and all I could make out was a few indistinct letters under the fresh paint. I made out an L, then DY, then NNE. I have a hunch the name was Lady Anne, but maybe not.
The man must have been a pretty rough character from all I could judge; a sailor, I daresay. It was out of the question rescuing the body. Every ounce of weight in our own boat made it worse for us, and we couldn’t have hauled it over the side without danger. So we did the next best thing and that was to go through his pockets in the hope of finding something to identify him.
You getting sleepy? No? Well, we found a weather wallet on him. Know what that is? It’s a pocket-book made of rubber. You can see them in ship supply stores all along South street in New York. In there he had two hundred and seven dollars and a letter. The writing was all smeared and some of it I couldn’t read at all. I couldn’t make out the address, but I think it was signed “Father.”
That was no place to be doping things out, with the seas rolling us goodness knows where, so I just stuffed the money in my trouser pocket, because it made too big a wad to go in my wallet. But I dried the letter as best I could and put it away in this little case I always carry. Here’s the case and here’s the letter now. And I suppose that if there’s any mystery, as you call it, why this is it.
Now just wait and don’t get excited and you’ll see the letter. Just let me finish. We pushed off from the life boat and I think it must have sunk soon afterward. The sea got pretty calm after a while and late that afternoon we were picked up by a schooner and set ashore.
Jake and I agreed to say nothing about our discovery; I’ll tell you the reason in a minute. He forgot and blurted out something about our finding a life boat and it got into the newspapers, but no harm was done, because after our rescue we gave the names of Mike Corby and Dan McCann and after we had started home, no one knew who to hunt for, even if they wanted to.
But the principal reason we gave false names was, because my leave from camp was already up and I didn’t want anybody, my own folks especially, to know that I had sidestepped home and mother to go off on a crazy fishing trip. Get me?
Jake went home and I haven’t seen him since. I hustled to Bridgeboro by train, sneaked over to Little Valley in a big hurry to change my duds and—the house-boat was gone. The boy scouts had carried away my uniform and Lieutenant Donnelle was a ragged outcast, a couple of days overdue at camp.
How to get my uniform, that was the question. The boy scouts had done me a bad turn. I traced the fugitive house-boat to St. George, Staten Island. I lurked near shore till dark, and when a party of you kids came ashore and one of you mentioned to another that a certain Roy had remained on board, I said, “Here is my chance.”
I rowed over, made his acquaintance, took him into my confidence, obtained his promise of silence, and changed my clothes. I found him a bully little scout. The old rags which went by the name of trousers I put into the locker, forgetting in my hurry, to take the two hundred and seven dollars. After fastening the locker I took some change out of my uniform to reward our young friend, but he spurned my offer. I must have dropped the locker key when I pulled the change out of my pocket. As you all know, little Skinny found it and got himself suspected of hiding the money in the locker. So much for that. I returned to camp and got slapped on the wrist for being late.