"It was my father who was really concerned.Dawson had retired.
I was only ten years of age at the time, but I was old enough to feel the shame and horror of it all.It has always been said that my father stole all the securities and fled.It is not true.It was his belief that if he were given time in which to realize them all would be well and every creditor paid in full.
He started in his little yacht for Norway just before the warrant was issued for his arrest.I can remember that last night when he bade farewell to my mother.He left us a list of the securities he was taking, and he swore that he would come back with his honour cleared, and that none who had trusted him would suffer.Well, no word was ever heard from him again.
Both the yacht and he vanished utterly.We believed, my mother and I, that he and it, with the securities that he had taken with him, were at the bottom of the sea.We had a faithful friend, however, who is a business man, and it was he who discovered some time ago that some of the securities which my father had with him have reappeared on the London market.
You can imagine our amazement.I spent months in trying to trace them, and at last, after many doublings and difficulties, I discovered that the original seller had been Captain Peter Carey, the owner of this hut.
"Naturally, I made some inquiries about the man.I found that he had been in command of a whaler which was due to return from the Arctic seas at the very time when my father was crossing to Norway.The autumn of that year was a stormy one, and there was a long succession of southerly gales.My father's yacht may well have been blown to the north, and there met by Captain Peter Carey's ship.If that were so, what had become of my father? In any case, if I could prove from Peter Carey's evidence how these securities came on the market it would be a proof that my father had not sold them, and that he had no view to personal profit when he took them.