“Why, about my Uncle Amazon.”

“How d’ye know he’s your uncle at all?” demanded Betty.  “You never seen him before he come here.  You never knowed nothin’ ’bout him, so you said, ’fore you come here to Cardhaven.”

“But, Betty——­”

“Ain’t no ‘buts’ about it!” fiercely declared the “able seaman.”  “Cap’n Abe’s gone—­disappeared.  We don’t know what’s become of him.  Course, Huldy Baker was a silly to think Cap’n Abe had been murdered and cut up like shark bait and shipped away in that old chest.”

“Oh!”

“Yes.  ’Cause Perry seen Cap’n Abe himself that night when he took the chest away.  That was ridic’lous.  But then, Huldy Baker ain’t got right good sense, nor never had.

“But it stands to reason Cap’n Abe had no intent of shipping aboard any craft with sich dunnage in his chest as they say was in it.”

“No-o.  I suppose that is so,” admitted Louise.

“Then, what’s become of the poor man?” Betty ejaculated.

“Why, nobody seems to know.  Not even Uncle Amazon.”

“Have you axed him?” demanded the other bluntly.

“No.  I haven’t done that.”

“Humph!” was the rejoinder.  “You’re just as much afeared on him as the rest on us.  You take it from me, Miss Lou, he’s been a hard man on his own quarter-deck.  He ain’t no more like Cap’n Abe than buttermilk’s like tartaric acid.

“Cap’n Abe warn’t no seafarin’ man,” pursued Betty, “though he had the lingo on his tongue and ’peared as salt as a dried pollock.  It’s in my mind that he wouldn’t never re’lly go to sea—­’nless he was egged on to it.”

Here it was again!  That same doubt as expressed by Washy Gallup—­the suggestion that Cap’n Abe Silt possessed an inborn fear of the sea that he had never openly confessed.

“Why do you say that, Betty?” Louise hesitatingly asked the old woman.

“’Cause I’ve knowed Cap’n Abe for more’n twenty year, and in all that endurin’ time he’s stuck as close to shore as a fiddler.  With all his bold talk about ships and sailin’, I tell you he warn’t a seafarin’ man.”

“But what has Uncle Amazon to do with the mystery of his brother’s absence?” demanded Louise.

“Humph!  If he is Cap’n Abe’s brother.  Now, now, you don’t know no more about this old pirate than I do, Miss Lou.  He influenced Cap’n Abe somehow, or someway, so’t he cut his hawser and drifted out o’ soundings—­that’s sure!  Here this feller callin’ himself Am’zon Silt has got the store an’ all it holds, an’ Cap’n Abe’s money, and ev’rything.”

“Oh, Betty, how foolishly you talk,” sighed the girl.

“Humph!  Mebbe.  And then again, mebbe it ain’t foolish.  Them men to-day thought they could scare that old pirate into admittin’ something if they sprung Cap’n Abe’s chest on him.  Oh, I knowed they was goin’ to do it,” admitted Betty.

“Course, they had no idee what was in the chest.  Bustin’ it open was an accident.  Perry Baker’s as clumsy as a cow.  But you see, Miss Lou, just how cool that ol’ pirate took it all.  Washy was tellin’ me.  He just browbeat ’em an’ left ’em with all their canvas slattin’.