s, not many weeks' sail from the place
where the mysterious Professor was to be found. On the other hand, it
was plainly my duty to make for home by the quickest route possible.

Duty and inclination were at daggers' drawn again. I told myself that as
long as there was a possibility that the mysterious Professor might be
my lost father, I should take up with this offer of Captain Tugg. I
might never be able to find this man of mystery if I did not sail on the
Sea Spell when she slipped away from Buenos Ayres.

"It's my chance!" I thought. "I can go home if there proves to be
nothing in the venture. Why! I might take a steamship right at the
Straits for some United States port. It's my chance! I'll do it."

And so--as I had many times before--I came to a reckless conclusion and
went into a venture the end of which was mighty misty! I suddenly turned
to the lathlike Yankee and told him that I would take up with his offer,
and we shook hands upon the compact.

But once I had entered into the agreement I found I had a hundred things
to do and little time to do it in. Old Tom Anderly had not come back to
the boarding house and I could not wait for him to appear. Captain Tugg
was already thinking of loafing along to the dock where his two-stick
schooner was moored. I bundled up my dunnage and went with him.

"You'll take second mate's berth, son," said the long-legged Yankee.
"Not that you're fit for it, and I'll have to be on deck jest as much as
ever; but I can't put a white man for'ard with that bilin' of
off-scourin's I've got for a crew. I can trust Pedro; but there isn't
another man of the crew that I'd trust as far as I could sling a
barge-load o' bricks!

"You've the makin's of a smart sailor in you--I can see that," pursued
the Captain. "And you say you've begun studying navigation?"

"I picked up some aboard the Scarboro, listening to Captain Hi and Ben
Gibson."

"We'll make a mate of you in a year or two," said Captain Tugg,
confidently.

But that speech shocked me. I had no intention of following the sea a
year or two. I meant just then to sail down to this place Tugg told
about and take a look at the Professor individual. That's all I wanted.
Then it would be "homeward bound" for me.

We reached the schooner and I found her a nice looking craft, bright and
shining, with new sails bent on and a scraped and oiled deck and pretty
sticks in her. She's been rigged new throughout and looked more like a
yach