have no doubt regarding my
poor father's death. If he had not been drowned off Bolderhead Neck,
and had been hidden away in this wilderness so many years, he had gone
to his account now.

I was sorry I had come down here in the Sea Spell; but being here I had
to somewhat wait upon Captain Tugg's pleasure before I could get away.
We warped the Sea Spell off the shoal and found her uninjured. She had
scarcely started a plank. Then the animal trapper set us all to work
rebuilding his camp, animal cages, and stockade. We were three solid
months repairing the damage done by the savages; but then Tugg had a
camp that would be impregnable to the wild men from up the river.

I had expressed to him at once my wish to return to the coast where I
could get a chance to work my way north in some vessel. But it was three
months before he could spare me a canoe crew to take me as far as Punta
Arenas, on the Straits. From that point I would be able to board some
vessel bound into the Atlantic, and if I could get back to Buenos Ayres
I would be all right.

I had wasted nearly six months in following a will-o'-the-wisp. I might
have been at home long ago, had I not come down here on the schooner.
More than a year had passed since that September evening when my cousin,
Paul Downes, and I had had our fateful quarrel on my bonnie sloop, the
Wavecrest, as she beat slowly into the inlet at Bolderhead. I had
roved far afield since that time, had seen strange lands, and strange
peoples, and had endured hardship and hard work which--after all was
said and done--hadn't belonged to me.

Clint Webb need not be knocking about the world, looking for a chance to
work his way home before the mast. As the canoe Tugg had lent me sailed
south through the inlet, with Pedro and two gigantic Patagonians for
crew, I milled these thoughts over in my mind, and determined that, once
at home, I'd stick there. Not that I was tired of the sea, or afraid of
work aboard ship; but I was deeply worried regarding my mother and what
might be happening to her so far away.

Nothing but the desire to set eyes on the man that looked like me and
talked like me had brought me 'way down here in Patagonia; I had never
told Captain Tugg my real reason for shipping on the Sea Spell, not even
when I bade him good-bye. The old fellow had seemed really sorry to have
me go.

"If you git tired of civilization and want to come down this way again,
son," he told me, "you'll be as