“My father was a high-spirited man,” she continued, “and his disgrace embittered him against England and everything English. He soon left home, without saying where he was going, and when we next heard from him he was in Hong Kong. He corresponded with us regularly after that and in three or four years, when I was about fifteen, he wrote mother and me to take a P & O ship for Singapore, where we would find further instructions. When we got there father was waiting for us on a handsome yacht, the ‘Queen,’ which is the ship that you have heard so much about. I am still using her. He brought us to this island, which he had fitted out as a retreat. He had established a small settlement down on the lake and built a warehouse in which to store his goods, and a machine shop to facilitate repairs to his ship. He had taken great pains and put himself to a large expense to make his rendezvous secure from intrusion or discovery. “Evidently this lake is in the crater of an old volcano which, when it subsided, left a high, narrow barrier between it and its old enemy, the sea. Down there,” pointing to the end of the lake opposite the village, “was a narrow opening into the lake, with a deep channel leading straight out to sea, though on both sides of it are rocks and shoals. Probably it was a fissure created by the volcano; anyway it served my father’s purpose perfectly. He had the opening closed up with rocks until it was just wide enough to admit the ‘Queen.’ The ridge there, you can see, is not more than thirty-five or forty feet high, so the partial closing of the gap was really not such a difficult task. Then he fitted into the opening that was left, a great double gate, which rolls back and forth, instead of opening outward, and though it weighs many tons its mechanism is so arranged that four men can operate it. The gate is strong enough to stand any storm but to avoid straining it we keep it open in heavy weather, unless ships are hovering about. From a watch tower on top of the mountain behind us we get a clear view of the sea in all directions, and a man is always on duty there. The ridge that cuts off the ocean rises toward the upper end of the lake and the village is entirely hidden behind it, as is the ‘Queen’ when her topmasts are housed. The island, as you can see, is very small and from the sea there is not a sign to indicate that it is inhabited. When the gate at the opening into the lake is closed it cannot be distinguished at a distance of an eighth of a mile, for it exactly resembles the rocks on both sides of it, but the channel which leads to it is known to no one save us and no other ship would dare to venture within a mile and a half of the shore on account of the rocks.