“I take great pleasure, my dear friends, in conferring on you the insignia of the Grand Cross of Trinadaro as a recognition of your invaluable loyalty and assistance. You will be entitled to call yourselves barons of my realm by royal warrant. While I must confess that I could not ordinarily approve of such summary methods as you made use of----” “It looks different now that old England is dropping astern,” suggested O’Shea. “The British constitution doesn’t loom as big as it did. Your own flag is at the mast-head, Your Majesty, and you can make treaties if ye like. I thank you with all my heart for the reward you have given me.” “It pleases me a heap more to be a member of the nobility of Trinadaro than to earn big wages for the voyage,” warmly assented Johnny Kent. “I’ll be the only life-size baron in my neck of the woods when I settle down on that farm in the State o’ Maine, eh, Cap’n Mike?” Freed of all anxieties and besetments, the royal passenger resumed his labor of planning the occupations of his subjects. His enthusiasm was delightful to behold. He seemed to grow younger with every day of the voyage southward. His was to be a kingdom of peace and good-will, of a benevolent ruler and a contented, industrious people. He was the stanchest kind of a royalist, and Trinadaro was to be a constitutional monarchy with an aristocracy which should be recruited after the pioneering work had been accomplished. The relations between the king and his mariners twain became those of pleasant intimacy. They came to know him much better during the long weeks at sea, and felt toward him an affectionate, tolerant respect. The ship had crossed the equator and was ploughing through the long blue surges of the South Atlantic when Captain O’Shea, after working out the noon observations, informed the king: “A couple of days more and we’ll begin to look for a sight of the peaks of Trinadaro. If the weather holds calm, we can begin to put the people and the cargo ashore right after that.” “The peaks of Trinadaro!” fondly echoed Osmond I. “Do you know, Captain O’Shea, I have wondered if you considered me a crack-brained old fool. Many men in England think so, I am sure. I know that my relatives do.” “’Tis my opinion that ye wish to make folks happy and that you will do no harm with your money,” was the reply. “And there’s few rich men that can say the same. No; ’tis not crack-brained to want to be a king. Power is what men desire, and they will trample on others to get it. I have heard ye talk here on board ship, and I have admired what you had to say. You will live your own life in your own way, but ye will not forget to make this island of yours a place for men and women to call home and to be glad that they have found it.”