Next morning we hauled up our anchor and left the Thimbles early. Rameses III did not have breakfast ready until we were well out in the Sound and had headed for Point Judith. It was another beautiful day. The Sound was as smooth as a piece of glass and there wasn’t a thing to do but be lazy, and there are times when I like being lazy a lot. Catty said he felt like he could lay back in a chair on deck and look at the water and snooze for a month. But I knew he couldn’t. Snoozing wasn’t in his line. No, sir, says I to myself. In half an hour that kid will be down taking the engine to pieces or doing something else to get us both into trouble. That’s the kind he is. He can’t sit still, and if there isn’t a thing to do, why, he invents something.

This time it was the engine room, and we hadn’t been through breakfast half an hour when he was down there sure enough, gassing with Tom, the engineer, and learning how to run the thing. By noon he knew all the parts of the engine by their nicknames, and it was all Tom could do to stop him from commencing with a screwdriver and a monkey wrench to find out what it looked like inside. He was daubed with grease from head to foot where he’d tried to crawl into the shaft tunnel to see how the clutch worked, and his fingers were blistered from monkeying with the hot cylinders. But he was happy, and what more can you ask.

I wasn’t het up much over engines, but I did want to learn how to steer, so I hung around the bridge until Mr. Browning explained the compass to me and let me steer a while. Mr. Topper just sat on the cushion behind the wheel looking like somebody had poisoned his oatmeal, and kept his eyes fastened on the black yacht that followed us out of the Thimbles and was about half a mile behind us now.

We made pretty good time that day, keeping just off the Connecticut shore, and rounding Point Jude, and then cutting across to Newport. We got there just before six o’clock. I was kind of excited, because I was never in a naval base before, and I was never anywhere where millionaires were thick like I’d heard they were in Newport. I don’t know which I was hottest to see—a warship or a multi-millionaire.

The Albatross nosed into the harbor past the big coast defense guns that nose out over the rock, and past the old fort, and then we turned to the right around a kind of an island with officers’ houses on it, and cast our anchor near the station of the New York Yacht Club. I enjoyed it a heap, and so did Catty. The place was full of destroyers anchored side by side like sardines in a sardine tin. There were dozens of them, and a couple of cruisers and other boats of the navy.

We had hardly cast anchor when the black yacht poked her snout around the island and anchored about a hundred yards from us. Mr. Topper snorted and Mr. Browning shrugged his shoulders, but Catty and I—we knew. We knew that yacht was after us and Mr. Topper and meant business of some kind, and we made up our minds we would keep our eyes pretty wide open to see what it was.

After supper we went ashore with Mr. Browning and walked around looking for millionaires, but we didn’t see any to speak of. Catty claimed he saw one, but I didn’t believe it, because he didn’t wear a silk hat and hadn’t any diamonds to speak of. Catty claims millionaires don’t always wear silk hats and diamonds, but I know better. Anybody that can afford them, wears them; I should, and everybody’s kind of like me, I’ll bet. If I was a millionaire I’d sleep in a Prince Albert coat and patent leather shoes, and when I got up in the morning, the first thing I’d put on would be a dozen diamond rings. No sense having all that money if you can’t kind of dazzle folks that haven’t.

The dinghy of the black yacht followed us in, and Catty and I kept our eyes on the man that came in with it. He was kind of big and wide with black hair and real nifty yachting clothes, white pants and all, and buttons with anchors on them. I got a good close look at him. Just as we were turning to go back to the boat Catty saw him go into the telegraph office on the corner and he nudged me.

“Let’s see what he’s up to,” said he, and then he says to Mr. Browning, “Wait just a minute at the boat for us, will you, Mr. Browning? We’ll be right there.”

“All right. Don’t get lost, and don’t let a millionaire bite you,” says he.

So we hiked back, and there was our man standing at the counter writing a message. Catty nosed up beside him and made believe he was writing a message, but he wasn’t. Pretty soon the man handed in his message, and Catty and I came away.

“Well?” says I.

“Got it,” says he.

“What did it say?” says I.

“It was to a man named Jonas P. Dunn in New York, and it said: ‘Followed them to Newport. Can’t lose them. Will act when advisable.’ And his name is House. That’s all.”

“It’s something,” says I. “I don’t like that part that they’ll act when advisable. It doesn’t sound cheerful. Wonder how they’ll act, and when it’ll be advisable.”

“That,” said Catty, “is for us to find out.”

It began to cloud up and get cold by the time we were getting back to the Albatross, and pretty soon it began to rain. The yacht began to roll a little, not so much because of the waves but on account of us laying at anchor with the wind blowing against us. I was pretty sleepy and so was Catty, so we went below and fixed up our berths and rolled in. It was the finest motion to go to sleep by that I ever felt. Regular rock-a-bye-baby, and before I knew it I was dreaming about pirates and desert islands and thingumbobs. I don’t know how long I slept, but all at once something waked me up and I lay still, kind of scairt. Then there came a sort of grinding bump and the Albatross rolled like a rolling pin, and I landed right out in the middle of the floor. Catty got there about the time I did.

“What’s the matter?” says he.

“Don’t know. Feels like we’re wrecked,” says I.

“How’s a boat going to get wrecked that’s lying at anchor?” says he.

“How should I know?” says I, and then Mr. Browning dashed out of his stateroom and up on deck, and we dashed after. It was raining like all git out. The wind was driving the rain along in a straight line, and it was so dark you couldn’t see the back of your neck. Just as we got there another bump came that threw me flat on the deck.

“Anchor’s dragging,” shouted Mr. Browning. “We’re drifting down onto somebody.”

Well, I didn’t know what to do, nor how serious it was, and I did know it was mighty cold and wet and uncomfortable, so Catty and I huddled together and waited to see. In a few minutes our eyes got used to the dark so we could see we had drifted down onto a big schooner yacht, and the two boats were bumping and grinding together and wearing off each other’s paint. Mr. Browning and Naboth and Tom and Rameses III were running around with fenders, and somebody was yelling at us and calling us pet names, and Naboth was yelling names back.

“Hey, you fat-bellied sardine can, what you rampagin’ down on top of us fer, hey? A-scrapin’ our paint off on your dirty nose.... You gasoline-stinkin’ bum-boat!” bellowed a voice out of the dark.

“Shet up,” howled Naboth, “you slab-sided lobster pot. You ornery garbage scow. Think you kin take up all the harbor with your ol’ she-camel? Sheer off there! Sheer off, or we’ll jest up and ride right over the top of ye.”

There were all kinds of compliments, and then Mr. Browning told Tom to start the engines, and ordered Naboth to see to the anchor. We got under way, and backed off from the other boat about a hundred yards and dropped anchor again. “There,” says Mr. Browning, “hope she holds this time.” So we started to turn in again, but before we could get below Naboth and Rameses III had started a quarrel about a rope fender that had got itself dropped overboard. Naboth claimed Rameses should have held the end of the rope, and Rameses claimed Naboth just let go out of pure meanness. In a minute they had forgotten the fender and veered around to Rameses III’s coffee, which Naboth claimed was made out of shavings and varnish, and from there they touched on legs and hair and relatives and laziness, and moved on to Jonah’s whale, and how much of an iceberg floats under water, and what makes the Gulf Stream hot—and then we turned in and let them go it.

In the morning when we woke up it was still cold and drizzly, and the wind was blowing a gale, so Mr. Browning said we’d stay right there in the harbor for the day and wait to see if the weather didn’t improve. It didn’t seem very bad in there, but I guess he thought the open water outside would be pretty rough. There was a lot of it out there to get rough, anyhow. So we got fixed to loaf all day and wait for the wind to go down.

There were some books down in the cabin, and I got settled to read, but Catty wasn’t in a reading humor. He wanted to do something, and finally he made up his mind to take the little dinghy and row ashore. So I went along with him. We walked all over Newport in the rain, and bought some post cards to send home, and some candy. Then we stopped in the yacht club station, and there was a book on the table called Lloyd’s Register of Yachts, or something like that, and we looked in it, and there was the name of every yacht in America with its dimensions and who owned it. We found our boat, and then Catty says, “Let’s see who owns the Porpoise.” So we looked it up; it belonged to Jonas P. Dunn.

“H’m,” says Catty, “that’s the man the telegram went to.”

“So it is,” says I.

“Then he’s the boss pirate,” says Catty, “and these fellows here are only hired men, like you might say.”

“Sure,” says I, “but what of it?”

“We might find out,” says he, “if Topper ever heard of a man named Dunn.”

“And then what?”

“Why,” says Catty, “then we’d know.”

“Know what?”

“If he’d ever heard of him,” Catty says with a grin.

Well, we loafed around some more, and then rowed back to the Albatross, and it was some row right into the teeth of the wind. Catty had rowed in, and it was my turn to row back. I kind of wondered why he volunteered to take the first turn, but I saw now. He’d figured out the wind would blow us into the dock, but it would take tough work to get us back.

“You’re a sweet one,” says I.

“What’s the matter?” says he, as innocent as a pint of cream.

“Why,” says I, “rowing in so’s I’d have to row back against this wind, and bust my spine.”

“Um,” says he, kind of satisfied with himself, “it pays to kind of keep your eyes open. But you’ll learn, Wee-wee. A few years knocking around, and you’ll learn to think it over before you take the first proposition offered you.”

We got back safe, but I was some tuckered out, and went down in the cabin where Mr. Topper was reading a book and smoking.

“Say, Mr. Topper,” says Catty, “did you ever hear of a man by the name of Jonas P. Dunn?”

“Jonas P. Dunn!” says he, jumping up like he’d been shot, “Jonas P. Dunn! Where’d you hear that name?”

“Why,” says Catty, “it’s just the man’s name that owns the Porpoise—that black yacht over yonder.”

“His boat!... His boat!... Are you sure?”

“Dead certain; Lloyd’s Register says so.”

Well, sir, Mr. Topper jumped for Mr. Browning’s door and hammered on it and Mr. Browning, who was taking a nap, hollered out kind of cross to know what the racket was, and Mr. Topper says to come out quick. So out came Mr. Browning.

“D’you know who owns that black yacht?” says Mr. Topper kind of sharp.

“No.... Who?... And what of it?”

“Jonas P. Dunn,” says Mr. Topper.

Mr. Browning whistled and then bit his lip.

“Does look as if there was something to worry about, doesn’t it?”

“Jonas P. Dunn is the man I’m more afraid of than anybody else in the world.”

“And that’s his yacht?”

“It says so in Lloyd’s.”

“Well, if that is Dunn’s boat, and I guess it must be, then we want to go mighty easy. Dunn is the kind of a man who sticks to a thing he starts after. He’s got all the money in the world, and he doesn’t care much how he gets more.... Um.... We’ll have to give that yacht the slip.”

“Let’s run now,” says Topper.

“We’d have a lovely time out there in this gale,” says Mr. Browning. “We might make New Bedford, and we might make Davy Jones’ Locker. No, there’ll be no running out before tomorrow. When we get up into Buzzards Bay we can give them the slip some place—among among the islands. Lots of places to dodge in and hide.”

“I wish we were there this minute,” says Mr. Topper.

“Well,” says Mr. Browning, “I don’t mind owning I feel that way myself.”