"I wonder what there is in Skipper Ed's life that he's never told us," he pondered. "He's always said he was a wandering sailor-man, who stopped on the coast because he liked it. He never was a common sailor, I'm sure. I never thought of that before! Sailors aren't educated, and he is! And whenever Jimmy or I asked him to tell about his own life before he came here he always put us off with something else."