It was from Ham Mayberry’s letter I got the facts regarding my cousin and his father. Lampton, the man at the boathouse, and Ham himself had had their suspicions of what had become of me, and how the Wavecrest had been swept away in the storm, before my letters from the Scarboro were received. They had found the cut mooring cable.
Ham, too, had sounded the ne’er-do-wells who were my cousin’s companions, and after the house on the Neck was closed for the season, and the Downeses had departed with my mother for Darringford House, the old coachman had obtained a confession from the young scoundrels to the effect that they had helped Paul nail me into my cabin and had seen him cut the Wavecrest adrift.
At the time I was heard from, Ham put all the evidence into the hands of Mr. Hounsditch, and the old lawyer had gone to the Downeses and threatened procedure against Paul. Chester Downes had flown into a violent passion with his son and had actually driven him out of his house, and Paul had disappeared. Of course, Ham at the time of writing knew nothing of what had become of Paul. There was a paragraph at the end of Ham’s letter that was explanatory, too, and I repeat it here:
“I don’t know what you mean by your questions about Jim Carver—that was his name. He was one of the three Carver boys—Bill and Jonas were as straight as a chalk line; but Jim always was a little crooked. He worked for the fish firm of Pallin & Thorpe, and I remember that he disappeared with some of the cash from their safe about the time poor Dr. Webb was drowned. Do you mean to say you have run across Jim Carver on board that whaling bark? Folks hereabout thought Jim Carver was dead years ago.”
So that settled the mystery of the man I had come clear down here to the Straits of Magellan to find—the man whom Captain Adoniram Tugg knew as Professor Vose and who had met so terrible an end when the savages had destroyed Tugg’s headquarters. It did not need Lawyer Hounsditch’s letter to show me how unwise I had been in not making my way directly home from Buenos Ayres when I had had the chance.
The lawyer reminded me that my mother needed me. He did not say anything directly—for he was a sly old fellow—but he intimated plainly enough that he feared Mr. Chester Downes’ influence in our home. I was almost a man grown, he said, even if I was a minor. “Your place is by your mother’s side. The lust for roving was born in you, I suppose,” he wrote, “your father had it, too; but put Duty before Inclination, and come home at once.”
Had I received those three letters when I visited the consulate at Buenos Ayres, I would have found means of taking the first steamer north thereafter. Even the romantic idea I had of trying to find my father would not have set aside what I plainly knew to be my duty.
I was hurt that mother should so cling to Chester Downes as her friend after all that had happened; yet I could not blame her for what was a weakness, not a fault. She was the best and dearest little woman on earth! And she needed me at that very moment, perhaps. Nothing now, I determined, should keep me from taking passage for home at the very earliest opportunity.