ed me guessing.

I think you kids had better tarn in now; it's getting late.

CHAPTER XV

NO! NO! NO! GO ON! GO ON!

All right, there isn't much more. We had no guess how long the man had
been in the boat or whether he had starved or what. He might have been
dead several days, I thought. The life boat was awash. There was the name
of some ship or other on the bows, but the boat had been painted since the
name was printed there, and all I could make out was a few indistinct
letters under the fresh paint. I made out an L, then DY, then NNE. I have
a hunch the name was _Lady Anne,_ but maybe not.

The man must have been a pretty rough character from all I could judge; a
sailor, I daresay. It was out of the question rescuing the body. Every
ounce of weight in our own boat made it worse for us, and we couldn't have
hauled it over the side without danger. So we did the next best thing and
that was to go through his pockets in the hope of finding something to
identify him.

You getting sleepy? No? Well, we found a weather wallet on him. Know what
that is? It's a pocket-book made of rubber. You can see them in ship
supply stores all along South street in New York. In there he had two
hundred and seven dollars and a letter. The writing was all smeared and
some of it I couldn't read at all. I couldn't make out the address, out
I _think_ it was signed "Father."

That was no place to be doping things out, with the seas rolling us
goodness knows where, so I just stuffed the money in my trouser pocket,
because it made too big a wad to go in my wallet. But I dried the letter
as best I could and put it away in this little case I always carry. Here's
the case and here's the letter now. And I suppose that if there's any
mystery, as you call it, why this is _it_.

Now just wait and don't get excited and you'll see the letter. Just let me
finish. We pushed off from the life boat and I think it must have sunk
soon afterward. The sea got pretty calm after a while and late that
afternoon we were picked up by a schooner and set ashore.

Jake and I agreed to say nothing about our discovery; I'll tell you the
reason in a minute. He forgot and blurted out something about our finding
a life boat and it got into the newspapers, but no harm was done, because
after our rescue we gave the names of Mike Corby and Dan McCann and after
we had started home, no one knew who to hunt for, even if they wanted to.

But the principal reason we ga