Sam let his friend work at the wet straps, while he continued to study the name at his end of the valise.
"'Tisn't a long one," he remarked; but at that moment Captain Kroom almost let go of the tiller-ropes, for the valise sprang open.
"Packed and jammed!" exclaimed Pete. "Hullo! What's this?"
"Hand me that log!" shouted the Captain, and Sam looked around the boat for loose timber. Not any kind of log was to be seen; the floating spar was long since out of sight; but Pete at once picked up and handed to Kroom a broad, thin, paper-covered blank book which lay in the middle of the valise.
"Bless my soul!" said Captain Kroom. "This 'ere's the log of the good ship Narragansett, of New Haven, and her captain's name is Pickering. The last entry in it is only a week old. Yes, sir, boys! He made it after the gale struck 'em! Before she was wrecked. This 'ere's awful! She must ha' gone all to pieces! Now for the inlet! Hurrah!"
His voice sounded excited, but he sat as steady as a post, and seemed to be giving all his attention to the management of the Elephant.
"Sam," he said, "you and Pete read some more of that log. Don't you fetch a thing in the valise. There are his barkers and his chronometer and lots o' papers. But that there alligator-skin valise was water-tight. It came across the bar at the inlet with the tide. There's current enough there then to whisk in a cannon."
Sam was a landsman, but he listened eagerly to all the Captain had to say about the ways of the coast and about the coming and going of ships. None of it seemed to be at all new to Pete; but then he had been born and brought up within sight of salt water, and he had heard Kroom talk many a time before.
The Elephant put her nose through or over the waves as if she were in a hurry, and all the while her crew were getting more accustomed to the presence of the valise. Sam studied its contents, all he could see of them, and he was learning something.
"That's the chronometer," he thought. "It's a big watch in a mahogany box. That's a splendid compass. Those pistols are what the Captain calls 'barkers.'"