The First Sea Lord proved kind, perhaps because Reginald was a young officer who had done well and was favourably known already, besides having once served in his own flag-ship and come under his notice; and though he hummed and hawed a little at first, and talked a good deal about the shortness of lieutenants, and so many being required to be called out for the Naval Man[oe]uvres, and so on, at last said that he thought he might promise that Lieutenant Crafer's services should not be asked for for another year. Then, next, the young man bought a chart of the Caribbean Sea, and, as the charts of to-day are rather better than they were in the elder Crafer's time, he found Coffin Island marked very plainly, though still not named, thereon; and he also saw the three Keys dotted on it. "So that's all right and comfortable," Reginald said to himself, whereon he at once made all his plans for going on his search, and, as has been told, had by now arrived at Antigua, whence the _Tyne_ goes fortnightly to Tortola and Anguilla. Yet, when he had settled down here to wait for that vessel's sailing--which would not be for another forty-eight hours--he scarcely knew how he should set about his work. Coffin Island might be inhabited by now, for all he knew, though judging by the little knowledge possessed of it by any of the _personnel_ of the ship in which he had come out, it did not appear very probable that it was. Nobody on board that ship could say whether it was occupied or not, most of the officers, indeed, being a little hazy as to where Coffin Island was. However, by the next day he had gained one piece of information which might or might not be true, but that, if the former, was likely to throw some difficulties in his way. He had learnt that there were inhabitants--as his informant believed, though he wouldn't be certain--on the island; for that there was such a place as Coffin Island was very well known in Antigua, if not in the Royal Mail steamers. He had encountered as he lounged about the hotel in St. John's--which is the capital of Antigua,--one of those busy gentlemen who are to be found in almost every part of the world to which strangers come and go: an American. This worthy person, who was young, tall, and dandified, having in his "bosom" a beautiful diamond pin, addressed Reginald the first moment he saw him with such a flood of offers and questions as almost stunned him; yet so long was the flow of oratory that it gave him time to collect his thoughts and be wary.