"If," said Mr. Hiram Juby, as he handed out a big card with that name on it, "you are thinking of settling here, I can be of assistance to you. Though, if you're buying land, I should scarcely recommend Antigua. It is not very remunerative and not cheap. Now, in Dominica, which has no export duties, sir, Crown land can be obtained for two dollars and a half an acre. Trinidad is five dollars, St. Lucia five; Tobago, also without export duties, is two and a half. I am also an agent for the United States Governmental Insurance Company, patronised and insured in by the first families of the----" "I am not thinking of buying any land, Mr. Juby," Reginald said, quietly. "Then you must be a tourist. Therefore, you will want to know the best hotels. Now there is----" "I shall stay at no hotels," Reginald again replied. "Stay at no hotels! Then you are perhaps going to camp out. If so, I have the agency for some of the best United States tents, utensils, rifles and guns, hickory fishing-rods, and so forth. Sir, will you take a cocktail, or shall we try a dish of mangrove oysters? Or, if you are a conchologist, mineralogist, or botanist, I should like to show you some collections I have for sale which would save you much labour and classification----" "Sir," said Reginald, "I am none of those things! I am a sailor amusing myself with a visit to this lovely spot. I want nothing," and he turned on his heel. "Stay, sir, stay, I beg," Mr. Juby said, going after him as he left the verandah. "You are a sailor visiting this lovely spot, and you want nothing I can supply you with! Why, sir, I have the very thing for you--a thing that would have suited nobody but a sailor. I have a little thirteen-ton cutter yacht--it belonged to Sir Barnaby Briggs--your countryman, sir, who died of drink, so they said, not I, in Guadaloupe--but then these French will say anything but their prayers. And I will let it you, sell it to you, furnish it for you, find you a sailor man or so----" "What," said Reginald, interested now, for he thought perhaps here was the best way of all in which to visit Coffin Island--"what do you want for the hire of it?" But before even these terms could be arranged, Mr. Juby insisted--and he would take no denial--that they should be discussed over the most popular drink in all the West Indian Islands, a cocktail; so on to the verandah they went to partake of one. And it was among the various acquaintances to whom Mr. Juby--in thorough American fashion--insisted on "presenting" Reginald, that he learnt that Coffin Island was inhabited. CHAPTER XXIX. DRAWING NEAR. "The Virgin Isles," exclaimed one of these acquaintances as he spat on the ground after swallowing his cocktail at a gulp, "the Virgin Isles! Why, darn the Virgin Isles! What can you do there, young fellow, 'cept go fishing? That is, unless you are a Dane or else a Dutchman "--by which he meant a German--"then you might trade a bit."