About J. Dudley Simms I dug up all kinds of information. He'd been
brought up by an old uncle who'd made a million or so runnin' an ale
brewery and who had a merry little dream that he was educatin' J.
Dudley to be a minister. If he'd lasted a couple of years longer, too,
it would have been the Rev. J. Dudley Simms for a fact; but when uncle
cashed in, Dudley left the divinity school abrupt and forgot ever to go
back.
I even discovered that Professor Leonidas Barr, the fish expert and Old
Hickory's cribbage partner, had once worked in a shoe store and could
still guess the size of a young lady's foot by lookin' at her hands.
But when it came to collectin' any new dope about Captain Killam, he's
still Rupert the Mysterious.
Durin' them long days when we went churnin' steady and monotonous down
towards the hook end of Florida, with nothin' happenin' but sleep and
meals, 'most everybody sort of drifted together and got folksy. Not
Rupert, though. He don't forget for a minute that he's conductin' a
dark and desperate hunt for pirate gold, and he don't seem contented
unless he's workin' at it every hour of the day.
Course, after he's pulled that break of tacklin' J. Dudley for a mutiny
plotter, Old Hickory shuts down on his sleuthin' around the decks, so
he takes it out in gazin' suspicious at the horizon through a pair of
field glasses he always wears strapped to him.
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