“Tom said that at last he got rather chummy with one of them, named Dick, and used to have long talks with him. From what the man let slip, Tom learned that he had passed most of his life in the coastwise trade, and though he didn’t say right out that he had been a smuggler, Tom guessed as much.
83“One night Dick, while reefing sails in a blow, had a bad fall from aloft. He was a very sick man for a while, and the skipper didn’t know whether he’d pull through or not. The captain detailed Tom to look after him, and in that way they got more confidential than ever.
“One day Dick had a turn for the worse and thought he was going to die. He was dreadfully scared and after a good deal of beating around the bush, told Tom that he wanted to get something off his mind. He didn’t want to die, he said, without having made a clean breast of it.
“Then he went on to say that he had been a seaman on board a coastwise trader called the Ranger that hailed from some Canadian port not far from Halifax. She did a good deal of legitimate trading, but mixed in with this a considerable amount of smuggling.
“Her captain was a man named Ramsay–––”
“That’s the very name Ross gave us,” broke in Teddy excitedly.
“He was a hard man, but, outside the smuggling, a straight one,” resumed Mr. Lee, “and the people along the coast had confidence in him.
“One day a man, whose name Dick didn’t remember, came aboard for a trip to the New England coast. He had considerable luggage, and among other things there was a heavy box that it took two men to handle. The man had them put 84 the box in his cabin, although some other things he permitted to be placed in the hold.
“They had only been a day or two out, when Ramsay was killed by a tackle block that fell from aloft while he was walking the deck. The mate, Manuel, who Dick explained was the big Portuguese, took command and the captain was buried at sea.
“The passenger seemed to grow nervous after the captain’s death, and kept pretty closely to his room. But he couldn’t stay there always, and one day when he entered it he found Manuel there trying to open the chest. There was a fight right away, and in the struggle the man was badly hurt by a blow from a hatchet that Manuel had in his hand.