hburn, I had
discovered the plot; and having the good fortune to save Owen's life in
a storm, before he was fairly committed to the conspiracy, he had
become my fast friend.

My cousin's mother was very rich, and it appeared that she gave him
money without stint or limit. Carrington had bought the sister yacht of
the Sylvania, the Islander, which was to take part in the conspiracy
against me, and in which the solicitor had followed the Sylvania to
Florida. He had employed Captain Parker Boomsby, the down-east skipper,
then settled in Michigan, to command her, and to assist in carrying out
his plan. One feature of the scheme was to make me believe that my
father was dead; and for months I did believe it. Captain Boomsby
claimed that I had been "bound out" to him till I was twenty-one; and
he insisted upon the possession of my person and my property as much as
though I had been his slave. My father had made an arrangement with him
by which he had abandoned all his interest in me, but at the reported
death of my father, Carrington had induced him to assert his claim
again.

Captain Boomsby had followed me to Florida in the Islander, with the
solicitor as his passenger. The former had evidently undertaken "to get
rid of me;" but, instead of doing this, he had sacrificed the
solicitor. Both he and the lawyer had become hard drinkers, and in the
Captain's attempt to wreck me, he had sunk the Islander and drowned his
employer. I judged that this would be the end of the conspiracy; and so
it was, so far as my cousin Owen and the solicitor were concerned, but
not on the part of Captain Boomsby.

I had left my "ancient enemy," as I had a right to regard Captain
Boomsby, at Jacksonville when we sailed for the West Indies. I knew
that his experiment of making money in Michigan had been a failure, and
that he was looking for a more hopeful field of operations in some
other section of the country. One of his men told me that he intended
to run the Sylvania on the St. Johns River as a passenger boat, and
that he felt sure of obtaining possession of her, because, he asserted,
he was the rightful owner of her. The paper he had signed was destroyed
with the rest of my valuables.

As the steam-yacht approached the coast of Florida I did not even think
of my ancient enemy. I had left him in Jacksonville, where he was
drinking all he could carry, every day. He was terribly bitter and
revengeful towards me; for though my father had paid