t of
discomfort and are thrown among the most objectionable people and endure
more hardships of a different kind than are handed to them aboard
ship--and that's saying a good deal!

It was a warm night, too, and there were crowds on the street. A
confusion of different dialects came up to me and it was only now and
then that I heard an English word spoken. But these impressions came to
me quite unconsciously at the time. I had a problem--and a hard one--to
solve.

I had really not recovered from the shock I had received at the American
consul's. My money and letters were gone. Paul Downes had represented
himself as me and had got away with the money with which I had expected
to pay my passage home. But, of course, I really was not in great
straights for means of getting back to Bolderhead.

With the experience I had had upon the whaling bark, and with my
physique, I knew very well that I could obtain a berth on either a
sailing or a steam vessel bound for the northern ports. I could work my
way home after a fashion. Besides, I could sell my sloop for almost
enough money to pay for a first-class passage to Boston on a Bayne
Liner.

To tell the truth, I was more troubled by the loss of my letters than I
was by the loss of my money. I was anxious about my mother--anxious to
know how she had endured the shock of my absence, what her present
condition was, and all about affairs at home. Besides, there might have
been private information in those letters that I wouldn't want Paul
Downes to learn.

My rascally cousin had certainly set out on a career worthy of a pirate!
He had run away from home--and probably because he was afraid of
punishment for his crimes--and here in Buenos Ayres, so far from
Bolderhead, had begun a new career of wrong-doing.

"He certainly is a bad egg!" I thought.

But it wasn't upon Paul Downes that my mind lingered long. My cousin had
played me a scurvy trick; but I was not made helpless by it. I could get
home after a fashion--if I wanted to. And that was my problem! Did I
want to go home?

Until I had talked with this Captain Tugg I thought I had had my fill of
adventure and sea-roving. But his story of the man who had been his
partner for twelve years--the man who looked and spoke like me--had
wheeled my mind square about! Instead of being headed north in my
thoughts, I was at once headed south. _I wanted to see this Professor
Vose!_

Yes. Spectre though the man was--will-o'-the-wisp a