mind yer, and nothin' but his
bare word for it that there was so much as a single oyster in the place!
I got up to go away and leave him; and then he asked me if I was game
to go shares with him--he to give me the secret, I to go out to the
Pacific and fish up the pearls, and the two of us to divide equally when
I got back home again. Well, that was somethin' more like a business
proposition, and after a lot o' talk I agreed; and he give me the
latitood and longitood of the place right there, afore I left him, I
givin' him a hundred dollars on account, to carry him along a bit until
he could get a job. Then I went back home to Baltimore and began to
figure upon the best way to work the scheme. I wa'n't rich enough to
make the trip purely as a speculation, so at last I hit upon the
sandalwood idea, which I reckon'll pay the expenses of the v'yage and
return me a profit, even if I don't find nary a pearl, although I've a
very good notion that they're where Abe said they was. The next thing I
did was to get a few p'ints upon the ins-and-outs of sandalwood tradin';
and when I'd done that I started out to get my stock of notions,
overhaul the schooner and make her ready for the v'yage, and look about
for a crew of men that I could be sure wouldn't play no tricks after
we'd got hold of the pearls.

"We sailed from Baltimore the day a'ter Christmas, and, as we was
castin' off, this here letter that I told ye about was handed aboard.
And when I come to open it, what d'ye think was the news in it? Reckon
you'll never guess. I've got a cousin 'way over in Nantucket--he's
pretty well-to-do--and findin' myself runnin' a bit short o' money when
it come to fittin' out the schooner, I went over to him, told him all
about Abe and the pearls, and asked him to lend me a thousand dollars to
leave with my old Marthy, to keep her goin' while I was away. He knows
me, and let me have the dollars straight away. Well, this here letter
was from him; and what it said was that he was writin' in a hurry to
tell me that he'd just heard, quite by accident, that Abe was dead--died
in hospital in New York, havin' been run over and fatally injured by an
express wagon two days a'ter I'd left him. And--this is where the
trouble comes in--afore he died he sent post-haste for his
brother-in-law, Abner Slocum, to go to him to oncet, as he had somethin'
most terrible partic'lar to tell him. Abner went; and although my
cousin don't know what Abe told