ters as I was advised.
I wrote to my mother, of course, to Ham Mayberry, and last of all, and
more particularly, to Lawyer Hounsditch.

To the latter gentleman I explained all I feared regarding Mr. Chester
Downes and his machinations. To Ham I told the particulars of my having
been swept out to sea and instructed him to find my mooring rope and
save it, with its cut end for evidence; and if possible to learn who had
helped Paul Downes, my cousin, cut me adrift and nail me in the cabin
of the Wavecrest. To my mother I wrote cheerfully and asked her to
have money sent me at Buenos Ayres, as that might be a port the Scarboro
would touch at, or a port I could reach if I left the whaleship.

I cannot say that I was continually worried by my state aboard the
whaler. What boy would not have delighted in being thus thrust into the
midst of the very life and work he had so longed to follow? I could not
but feel that it was _meant_ for me to be a sailor, after all.

The Webbs had been seafaring folk, time out of mind. My father's father
had tried to keep his own son off the water by giving him a college
education and making a doctor of him. But the moment my father was sure
of his sheepskin, he had looked about for a chance to go as surgeon on a
deep water ship, and had gone voyage after voyage until his marriage.

Inside of a fortnight Captain Rogers had complimented me on my work and
manner, and Mr. Robbins, the mate, said I was worth my salt-horse and
hardbread. Of course while on duty Ben Gibson, the young second mate,
and I must of necessity hold to "quarterdeck etiquette;" he was "Mr.
Gibson" and I was "Webb." We were punctilious indeed about these
niceties of address. Off duty, however, we were two boys together, and
rather inclined to sky-lark.

The other close friend that I made aboard the Scarboro during the first
few days of the voyage, was old Tom Anderly. He was the bewhiskered old
barnacle who had welcomed the possibility of getting oil in the bark's
tanks from the dead whale, when I had first come aboard.

Anderly was a boat-steerer, an old sea dog who had sailed oft and again
with the skipper, and who had lanced more whales than any other half
dozen men aboard. Being in old Tom's watch I grew soon familiar with
him; and from the beginning I saw that the old seaman took more than a
common interest in me.

The old man was full of stories of whale fishing and other experiences
at sea. But it was not his fund