“Naw. Leastways, I don’t believe so,” Tom responded. “He’d been by this time. They were here before school started. Why, it’s months since they moved into that house, and none of ’em has ever so much as spoke to anybody in Blue Port. They eat their meals at the Roncador House, but they never go _anywhere_. Not even to church.” Everybody went to church in Blue Port. The information was astounding. The two boys agreed that a real mystery invested the Vantons; and as for Captain Vanton, he must have done something hellish to have so much money and hold so aloof and walk down Main Street as if it were his sacred quarterdeck on the queenly _China Castle_. III The _China Castle_! She had been a wonderful ship in her day, a Bath-built clipper. John Hawkins, husband of Keturah Hawkins, uncle by marriage of Keturah Smiley, had been the first master of her; Captain Vanton had come to her cabin much later, in the days of her decline. It was John Hawkins and not Buel Vanton who had made the passage from New York to Honolulu in 90 days. Young Tom Lupton had not known or remembered the name of the three skysail-yarder whose glory descended upon every master who trod her quarterdeck. Only a few persons in Blue Port, indeed, recalled anything when they heard that Captain Vanton had been master of the _China Castle_. “Eh?” said these old fogies to each other. “She was John Hawkins’s ship!” This Captain Vanton could not, of course, have been the mariner that John Hawkins was, for Captain John had sailed his fine, fast vessel to California, making quick passages, and afterward took her into the China trade for which she had been built. Nevertheless, out of a sense of politeness, these oldtimers had, on one occasion or another, attempted to address Captain Vanton; it was a sort of duty to let him know that he was not a total stranger in Blue Port. No man could have a better sponsor than a ship John Hawkins had sailed. They were frozen by Captain Vanton’s hard stare. At the mention of the _China Castle_ he merely looked through their eyes and out the backs of their heads and into the bar of the Roncador House. At the various polite and hearty references to “Cap’n John Hawkins” he had but one course of behaviour: uttering a loud “Humph!” he would turn squarely on his heel, and lurch away evenly in the opposite direction.