"It is so," said the author with a little quiver of happiness. "But you are bound to say that, aren't you?" "I wouldn't say it if I didn't think it, Miss Pridmore." The quaint solemnity delighted her. "Uncle George says the Island of San Pedro is an imitation of 'Robinson Crusoe,' but nothing will ever make me admit that, so you had better not admit it either. Please say it isn't, to save my reputation for omniscience." "I had not read 'Robinson Crusoe' when I wrote the Island, and I suppose if I had I should have written it differently." "It's a very good thing you hadn't. There's nothing like the Island anywhere to my mind. You can see and feel and hear and smell and taste that Island. It is so real that when poor Dick was put ashore by the drunken captain of the brigantine _Excelsior_ I literally daren't go to bed. And my brother Jack says--and I always quote this to Uncle George--that no more lifelike picture of a windjammer--it is a windjammer, isn't it?----" "That's right." "And of an island in the Pacific could possibly be given." "Well, I wouldn't quite say that myself," said the sailorman, with the blood singing in his ears. "Of course not. It wouldn't be right for you to say it." "Where is Klondyke now, Miss Pridmore?" he asked suddenly. "No one knows. He probably doesn't know himself. The last letter my mother had from him arrived about two months ago. He was then in the middle of Abyssinia. But he has moved since. He never stays long anywhere when the wanderlust is on him. But we don't worry. He'll turn up one of these days quite unexpectedly, looking rather like a tramp, and will settle down to civilization for a short time; and then one morning he'll go off again to the most outlandish place he can think of, and we may not see or hear anything of him for months or even years." A dull period followed the dessert. Miss Pridmore and the other ladies went and the Sailor had to remain with four comparatively flat and tame gentlemen who smoked very good cigars and talked of matters which the young man did not feel competent to enter upon. It was an irksome twenty minutes, but it had to be endured. And it was not really so very difficult because he was in heaven. At last when the four other gentlemen had solemnly smoked their cigars, and he had smoked the mild cigarette which contented him, they went upstairs. And as they did so he felt the hand of Edward Ambrose on his shoulder and he heard a laughing voice in his ear. "Henry, you are going great guns."