“Had the crew been saved?” Dave asked. “Bless you, I dunno,” replied the mariner. “There’s hundreds and hundreds of ships breakin’ to pieces off the track of regular traffic, and only the sea knows what became of the men on ’em; and she don’t tell. No, siree! she holds her secrets fast.” “But didn’t the people on the island know?” the boy queried. There was a comical look in the old man’s eyes as he regarded his questioner. “Say, sonny,” he said, “you don’t think there’s trolley-cars runnin’ and department stores on every little two-by-four dump in the South Seas?” “I thought there might be a few natives,” Dave suggested. “Well, sometimes you find a bunch of them stoppin’ on an island, but we didn’t see anything livin’ there except a few turtles and sea-birds that knew nothing and cared less about how the _Hatteras_ got there. You never know what luck is comin’ your way when you’re a sailor. It might be our turn to get piled up on a rock after we leave here to-night at high water.” Somebody on deck called to the mariner. Dave, with a curious feeling, watched him clamber over the side and disappear. At high water the old salt was to begin a new series of adventures, all with the smack of the sea in them. In his imagination the boy depicted the mariner undergoing hairbreadth escapes and encountering perils of every description, all of which he would overcome so that when the ship reached port he could sit contentedly in a swinging cradle, painting the hull, and applying innumerable matches to a most obstinate pipe. Dave came of sea-going stock, the Hallards having followed the sea for generations. Dave’s father created a record in his early manhood by driving a clipper from Hong Kong to San Francisco in thirty-three days; and old Phineas Hallard, David’s grandfather, had been a pioneer in the copra trade with the West Indies.