of information, or his tales, that first
of all interested me in Tom Anderly. I had told nobody--not even Ben
Gibson--about the actual event of my being swept out to sea from
Bolderhead, nor had I said a word about my father. The fact that he had
been a sea-going physician would not help me hold my own with the crew
of the Scarboro. At sea, according to the homely old saw, "every tub
must stand on its own bottom."

"So you come from Bolderhead, do you?" quoth Tom to me, one day when we
were lounging together forward of the capstan, and he was mending his
pipe.

"That's where we live in the summer," I admitted.

"Jest summer visitors, are ye?"

"Well, my mother has a house there."

"Yes. Ye ain't a native, though, eh?" and before I could reply to this,
he continued: "I been studying about Bolderhead ever since you come
aboard. There was something curious happened at Bolderhead--or just off
the inlet--and it's all come back to me now."

"What was it?" I asked, idly.

"Well, it's quite a yarn," he said, wagging his head. "I was running in
the old hooker, Sally Smith, from Portland to New York. She carted
stone. There warn't but five of us aboard, includin' the cap'n and the
cook. But our freight warn't perishable," and he chuckled, "so speed
didn't enter into our calculations. One day there come up a smother of
fog as we was just off Bolderhead Neck. We'd run some in-shore. It fell
a dead calm--one o' them still, creepy times when you can hear sheep
bells and dinner horns for miles and miles.

"Well, sir! we lay there in this smother of fog and all of a suddent we
heard somebody hootin'. Cap he halloaed back. 'Blow yer scare!' sings
out the same faint voice. 'Keep it blowin'.'

"'There's somebody out yon tryin' to make the Sally,' says the Cap'n. I
stepped on the tread of the siren and kept her blattin' now and then
and, after some minutes, we heard a splashin' alongside and there was a
man swimming in the sea."

"He had swum out from shore?" I asked, just to keep the conversation
going. I wasn't really interested.

"No. His boat had begun leaking badly. It was too heavy to turn over,
and before it sank he slipped into the sea and made for us. He had seen
us before the fog shut down, and knew that we were becalmed. He'd just
tied his shoes about his neck by the lacings and swum out with every rag
of clothes on him--'cept his hat."

"And why did he swim for your craft instead of to shore?"

"Said he was nea