“Makes me think of a story I heard once about an old Nantucket fisherman. He always claimed that he could tell by the smell of the mud on the anchor, where they were, whenever they had to haul up in a fog. So one day, just to fool old Captain Jones, his men, while they were anchored in a fog somewhere off shore, took a handful of soil out of a box they had on deck, where the skipper kept some parsley growing, of which he was very fond.”
Hurrying to where he was sleeping they roused the old man by telling him that they had lost their bearings, and wanted him to tell where they were at, from the mud scraped off the anchor, and with that they clapped the soil taken from the parsley box under his nose. He took one smell, and then jumped to his feet wildly excited, yelling out:
“You lazy lubbers, you’ve let us drift ashore, and we’ve been anchored right over Mother Jones’ garden!”
It was Teddy’s turn to laugh now. But as the afternoon waned, his fears kept on growing apace.
“I don’t like it,” he would say, “it’s so unusual for Amos to stay away like this, and when he only meant to be gone a few hours.”
“But you say he couldn’t be lost?” remarked Dolph.
“I’m dead sure of that.”
“Then tell me, what might have happened to him, Teddy.”
“Oh, one of a good many things. He may have met up with those poachers, and had trouble,” the other said.