"Truck farmer!" cried Cleggett. "Abernethy?" "Truck farmer," repeated Wilton Barnstable. "Is not Abernethy an old sea captain?" asked Cleggett. "Why, no, I believe not," said Barnstable. "At least I never heard so. He is well known as a small truck gardener in this neighborhood. It is true that he comes of a seafaring family--indeed, it is his boast. But, in a community where nearly everyone knows a little about boats, I believe that Abernethy is remarkable for an indisposition to venture far from shore." "I can scarcely believe it," breathed Cleggett. "He does not understand boats," said Barnstable. "That is the reason, I take it, why he has always fished in the canal from the deck of the Jasper B." "Abernethy is a gallant man," said Cleggett, rather sternly. "And even although he may have had little actual seafaring experience, the instinct is in him! The inherited love of a nautical life has been latent in him all along. And at the first opportunity it has come out. He has shown his mettle aboard the Jasper B." "I do not doubt it, if you insist upon it," said Wilton Barnstable, politely. And from revolving his thumbs benignly towards himself he began to revolve them urbanely from himself. The reversal was imitated at once by Barton Ward, but Watson Bard was slower in putting this new coup into execution. "The resemblance between the two oblong boxes evidently fooled Logan Black," continued Barnstable, "and his men stole the wrong one, but he knows by this time that his plan to get the box has failed." "He knows it?" said Cleggett. "From the bank of the canal he witnessed our capture of the box, and of the two men who were making off with it. After you had beaten off his assault upon the ship, he turned his attention to the canal, to see if the men whom he had assigned to the job of creeping over the stern of the Jasper B. had by any chance succeeded in purloining the box. He was alone, but he attempted to come to the assistance of his two followers even as we made them prisoners. In fact, we exchanged shots." The great detective made little of the danger he had encountered. Indeed, his smile became one of amusement as he removed his coat, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and exhibited a bandaged wound in the fleshy part of his arm. "It is only a slight wound," he said, beaming on it as if wounds were quite delightful affairs, "and scarcely inconveniences me." Barton Ward and Watson Bard, with their sleeves rolled up, were also smiling placidly and indulgently at bandages about their left arms. Whether there were real wounds beneath their bandages also, Cleggett could not determine. The bandage of Barton Ward was slightly stained with red, but the bandage of Watson Bard was quite white. All three replaced their coats at the same time, and Wilton Barnstable went on: