"Sham!" replied William W. Kolderup, who had never seemed in such a good humour before. "The _Dream_ was quietly sunk by means of her water ballast, according to the instructions I had given Turcott. You thought she sank for good, but when the captain saw that you and Tartlet had got safely to land he brought her up and steamed away. Three days later he got back to San Francisco, and he it is who has brought us to Spencer Island on the date we fixed!" "Then none of the crew perished in the wreck?" "None--unless it was the unhappy Chinaman who hid himself away on board and could not be found!" "But the canoe?" "Sham! The canoe was of my own make." "But the savages?" "Sham! The savages whom luckily you did not shoot!" "But Carefinotu?" "Sham! Carefinotu was my faithful Jup Brass, who played his part of Friday marvellously well, as I see." "Yes," answered Godfrey. "He twice saved my life--once from a bear, once from a tiger--" "The bear was sham! the tiger was sham!" laughed William W. Kolderup. "Both of them were stuffed with straw, and landed before you saw them with Jup Brass and his companions!" "But he moved his head and his paws!" "By means of a spring which Jup Brass had fixed during the night a few hours before the meetings which were prepared for you." "What! all of them?" repeated Godfrey, a little ashamed at having been taken in by these artifices. "Yes! Things were going too smoothly in your island, and we had to get up a little excitement!" "Then," answered Godfrey, who had begun to laugh, "if you wished to make matters unpleasant for us, why did you send us the box which contained everything we wanted?" "A box?" answered William W. Kolderup. "What box? I never sent you a box! Perhaps by chance--" And as he said so he looked towards Phina, who cast down her eyes and turned away her head. "Oh! indeed!--a box! but then Phina must have had an accomplice--" And Uncle Will turned towards Captain Turcott, who laughingly answered,-- "What could I do, Mr. Kolderup? I can sometimes resist you--but Miss Phina--it was too difficult! And four months ago, when you sent me to look round the island, I landed the box from my boat--" "Dearest Phina!" said Godfrey, seizing the young lady's hand. "Turcott, you promised to keep the secret!" said Phina with a blush. And Uncle William W. Kolderup, shaking his big head, tried in vain to hide that he was touched. But if Godfrey could not restrain his smiles as he listened to the explanations of Uncle Will, Professor Tartlet did not laugh in the least! He was excessively mortified at what he heard! To have been the object of such a mystification, he, a professor of dancing and deportment! And so advancing with much dignity he observed,-- "Mr. William Kolderup will hardly assert, I imagine, that the enormous crocodile, of which I was nearly the unhappy victim, was made of pasteboard and wound up with a spring?" "A crocodile?" replied the uncle.