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Down South or Yacht Adventure in Florida

CHAPTER XII. SUGGESTIONS OF ANOTHER CONSPIRACY. I felt like a beleaguered general who had just opened communication with his reinforcements, when I again found myself holding intercourse, even by letter, with my father. It seemed as though a new life had begun for me. My father was happy, and so was I. He declared that he should join me as soon as his business would allow him to leave England; and that when he found me, as he should wherever I wandered, he never would leave me again. My father alluded at considerable length to "his best and truest friend," Mr. Tiffany. He had written to him, and desired him to take an interest in my affairs if he thought I needed any assistance, either with money or counsel. This was a partial explanation of the conduct of Mr. Tiffany; but he was a very strange man because he said nothing to me about his instructions from my father. Before I had finished reading the rest of my letters, Washburn came into the room; but when he saw I was engaged, he began to retire. I asked him to remain. He was my ever-faithful friend. He had fathomed the conspiracy against me, and I valued his counsel more than that of any other person. He had my fullest confidence, though he never sought to know my business. I related to him all the incidents of my visit to the city, including a full account of my adventures with the Boomsbys and the other snake. I need not say that he was intensely interested. "That Boomsby ought to be hung!" he exclaimed, as soon as I had finished my story. "Perhaps not," I replied, giving the captain's explanation of the presence of the snake in the closet. "I should like to follow that lodger's history, if Captain Boomsby had any such person in his house, which I do not believe," added the mate. "When I go on shore I will try to find out whether or not he had any lodger, and I think I can get at it." "It is hardly worth the trouble," I replied. "I think it is. For months we have been satisfied that this villain means you harm; but we have never been able to prove anything," said Washburn, with energy. "It is time to quit fooling with such matters. If he did not mean to sink the Sylvania for your benefit, he never meant anything in his life; but he explained it away, and everybody that knows anything about it, except you and I, believes that the accident was simply the result of his drunken condition on that morning. It is time to prove some of these things." "I have no objection to having them proved." "I will spend all the time I have on shore in this business; and I am--What was that?" The mate suddenly jumped from his chair, and rushed out of the room by the new door on the port side. I followed him. "What are you doing at that window?" demanded Washburn, to a man he had collared near the door of the engine-room, for he had pluck enough to pick up a water moccasin, if the occasion required. I could not make out the man in the darkness; and I did not quite comprehend the reason for his sudden assault on him. All the windows of our state-room were open, for the evening was warm. "I wasn't doing anything, Mr. Washburn," pleaded the culprit, in whose voice I recognized that of Griffin Leeds. "You were standing under the open window of the captain's room!" continued the mate, releasing his hold on the waiter when he found he offered no resistance. "No, sir; I wasn't standing there," replied Griffin, in a meeching tone. "I got asleep on the fo'castle after you went in; and I just waked up. I was just going below to turn in when you came out and got hold of me. That's the whole of it, sir." "If I ever catch you under an open window again, I will throw you overboard. We don't have anything of that kind on board of this steamer," said the mate, in a very decided tone. Griffin went below to his quarters under the forecastle, and Washburn followed me into the room. I thought he was a little rough on the new waiter, who had given excellent satisfaction in the forward cabin. I said as much as this to the mate. "The rascal was listening under that window to the talk between you and me," replied Washburn. "If you agree to have that thing done on board, you are the captain, and I have nothing more to say about it." "If you are satisfied that he was listening to us, you did just right. But I move to amend by substituting his discharge for throwing him overboard," I replied, laughing. "Do you think the fellow heard what we were saying?" "I have no doubt of it: he had been there for some time, for I heard a slight noise at that window soon after I came in; and I am confident he had been there ever since. I confess that I do not like the fellow very much, for I have seen him skulking about the deck with a hang-dog look which I don't admire. I have suspected him of something, though I don't know what, since the first day he came on board. While I am in for it, Alick, I might as well add that Cornwood is just such another fellow." "Cornwood?" I asked, very much surprised, for I had not noticed anything in either the Floridian or the waiter to attract my attention. "I don't know anything about Cornwood; and I suppose you looked up his record before you engaged him. At any rate, he acts like a snake, in my way of thinking," added the mate, whom none could accuse of covering up anything he believed or thought. "I did inquire about him in St. Augustine: people thought well of his knowledge and ability, though they agree that he is a brag and a boaster." "If there were nothing worse than that about him, I should only laugh. But I think he is a snake." "What makes you think so?" "I don't know; I only know that I do think so." "But you are not a fellow to think ill of anybody without some reason for it." "I have no reason, except his looks and actions," replied the mate. "I make no charges against him, and I can prove nothing; but Cornwood is a fellow that will bear watching." "That is just what the Hon. Pardon Tiffany took the trouble to tell me this afternoon," I added, relating the particulars of my interview with that gentleman. "I am glad there is some one besides myself who has an opinion on the subject," said Washburn. "Cornwood was in Captain Boomsby's rumhole when I came down stairs after the row in the attic," I added, watching the face of my friend to notice the effect of this announcement. "That's the best place for him; only this fellow will do a piece of treachery better than Boomsby can. Cornwood will not get drunk when he has a heavy job of iniquity on his hands. Boomsby is a wolf: this fellow is a snake. Cornwood reminds me of a kind of reptile they have in these parts, called the small rattlesnake. He is a little fellow, and you can't hear his rattle; but his bite will kill you as quick as that of a five-footer. You can't see or hear him, and the first thing you know you are a dead man. That's Cornwood's style, as I understand him." "You are rough on him. What you say of him, and what you have done to Griffin, remind me that the two men seemed to have some connection before we engaged either of them," I continued, thinking of the events of that first day in St. Augustine. "Griffin brought off Cornwood in a boat." "And when you apply to Cornwood for a stewardess, Griffin's wife appears to take the place. But I am bound to say I believe she is a lady," added the mate. "Then you think we are marching into hot water, do you, Washburn?" I asked with interest. "I don't say you are: I don't know that you are: only that we had better keep our eyes wide open, as Mr. Tiffany suggests. But it does look to me as though some sort of a storm is brewing." "But where can the storm possibly come from?" "From that rumhole in Bay Street which you visited this afternoon. I have heard that Boomsby threatened a dozen times to be the destruction of you. He says you have been the plague of his life; that you have crossed and defeated him so many times that he will be the 'ruination' of you yet. This is out of pure revenge. Besides this, he believes your father is dead, and that, if he can get you out of the way, or bring you into subjection to what he calls his authority, this steamer will come into his possession. I know he is a fool; but he believes all this nonsense." "Then you mean to suggest--without being able to prove it--that Cornwood is an agent of Captain Boomsby; and that Griffin Leeds is a tool of Cornwood, sent on board to watch me, as well as to wait on the fore-cabin table," I added, putting the various hints into words. "I don't say it means anything; but that is what it means, if anything," replied Washburn after some hesitation. "Nothing can be proved; and we should not be justified in doing anything on mere suspicion. All we have to do is to keep a close watch on Cornwood and Griffin Leeds." We agreed to do this, but in such a manner as not to alarm the conspirators, if they were such. I told Washburn then that I had letters from my father, and gave him both of them to read. While he was thus engaged, I began a letter to my father. "The last one is written in good spirits," said the mate, as he laid the letters on my table. "But isn't it a little strange that you have no letter of later date than last January from your father? I should have supposed there would have been three or four more letters awaiting you; I mean those he must have written in January." "I think there is nothing strange about that," I replied; but my heart sank within me at the very thought of any more doubts and uncertainties. "I wrote him that the Sylvania was bound to the Bahamas; but I had no idea where we should go next, or how long we should remain at any place to which we might go. I said we expected to return to Jacksonville in February." "That explains the matter. You did not show me your letter to him," replied the mate. "But we are several days into March, and you ought to hear from your father again very soon." "I shall expect a letter from him every day until I get one. I don't believe anything more can happen to him or me, for we have had our full share of mishaps." The mate was turning in for the night, when Buck Lingley brought me a note from Owen, which had just been sent off by a boatman. My cousin had arranged for an excursion to Fort George Island, near the mouth of the St. Johns River, for the next day at ten, if the weather was favorable. He expected about thirty people, and wanted dinner for them. I told Buck to carry the letter to the steward, that he might make his purchases of provisions early in the morning. It was one o'clock when I turned in, after finishing a twelve-page letter to my father. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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