Finally a man aboard the tug hailed us. Captain Tugg answered in Spanish, and an excited conversation ensued—at least, excited upon the side of the man aboard the steam vessel and his compatriots. The skipper of the Sea Spell seemed particularly calm and unshaken. I could understand but little of the talk, although I had begun to pick up the bastard Spanish spoken along the coast. I knew the Yankee and the dagos were bargaining.
Finally Tugg sang out to Pedro to belay the work he and the crew were engaged in, and to lower a boat again. The captain was rowed to the tug and after some further conversation I saw certain moneys counted out and paid over to the master of the Sea Spell. He was then rowed back and when he was aboard he ordered the dead whale cast off.
“And git some of your watch down there, Pedro,” added Captain Tugg, “and swab the grease off her side. Ugh! There ain’t nothing nastier than a whale.”
“Yet you were going to cut her up?” I suggested, curiously.
He favored me with a wink. “Buncome, Bluff,” he murmured. “That little play-acting turned me two hundred dollars in gold. Our lying becalmed here wasn’t such a bad thing after all—and here comes the breeze. Jest like finding money in an old coat, Mr. Webb—that’s what that was.”
And so the shrewd old fellow turned everything to account. We got a breeze and were out of sight of the place before the small craft had got the big whale towed into the inlet—where they would beach it and cut it up. Captain Adoniram Tugg was two hundred dollars in pocket, and just because some mysterious sea-beast had seen fit to kill a whale for its tongue!
We had a fine breeze after the long calm, but nothing but fair weather until we rounded the Cape of the Virgins. There the broad entrance of the magnificent Straits of Magellan lay before the nose of the schooner. A little later we had furled all but the topsails and were sailing due north into an inlet masked by many dangerous looking reefs. The mate of the Sea Spell, Pedro, seemed to know the channel well, however, and although Adoniram Tugg remained on deck he did not seem to be worried at all about the schooner’s safety.
“We’ll drop anchor before morning,” he told me. “That is, if the wind holds in the same quarter. You’ll have a chance to see what sort of a good fellow the Professor is tomorrow.”
“What! are we so near your headquarters?”
“That’s the checker,” returned Tugg. “Just a short sail now.”