As Dorothy led the way, followed by Bill and Joe, Howard turned to Jackson, who had been listening to the sailors in dazed silence. “If you want to get away from here, Jackson,” he counselled hurriedly, “for God’s sake keep quiet about me. If you don’t, Forbes is likely to keep us here for the rest of our lives. The chances are he will try to do it anyway.” IX SHORTLY after dinner the entire party set out for the village, which was, it seemed, only half a mile away, and would have been reached by Jackson and Howard had they chanced to go in the right direction. Bill and Joe knew all the easiest routes across the wreckage, and led the newcomers by one, which, though not quite direct, yet involved the minimum of effort on Dorothy’s part. Nevertheless, progress was necessarily slow, and it took nearly an hour to go the so-called half mile. When the village was sighted, it was evident that considerable pains had been taken to make it comfortable. A score of modern vessels, mostly steamers, of about the same phase of flotation had been pulled into place and so bound together as to constitute a solid mass. Over what had once been the interstices between them, planking had been laid, making it possible to go anywhere about the place without difficulty. Awnings, spread from mast to mast, gave promise of cool shade. “The cap’n fixed this up about a year after he came,” explained Bill to Howard. “Before then we just pigged around any which-a-ways. But he says that what with new ships drifting in continual, we’re gettin’ too far from the coast and we’ll have to move soon. Yonder he is, sir.” As Bill spoke, a tall, thickset man came hurriedly on deck, ran to the edge of the platform, cast a quick glance at the newcomers as they scrambled over the wreckage toward him, and then turned and beat a rapid tattoo on a ship’s bell that hung close at hand. “That’s the signal that something’s doing,” explained Joe. The village awoke to life. Half a dozen hatchways gave out figures in every style of costume, and when the newcomers reached the deck, practically the entire population was waiting to welcome them. Forbes was first, the rest holding back respectfully to give him precedence. “Welcome! Welcome!” he called, holding out both hands. “Seldom indeed has any one been so welcome. And a special welcome to you, fair lady,” he added, as he bent low over Dorothy’s slender fingers. Then he turned to the villagers behind him. “Come, all of you,” he commanded. “Come and make our new friends feel at home.” They came, all of them, crowding round the newcomers with a babble of greetings and questionings as to the world from which they had been so long cut off. So rapid was the fire of interrogation, and so multifarious the questions, that they fairly swept Jackson off his feet, and left the other two in little better case.