Isle o' Dreams. Frederick Ferdinand Moore

the company would go in on it with me. I've always wanted to come here but my chief never thought much of it. So I'm on a vacation, and what I find for myself I'll be able to swing. If Dinshaw would split——"

      "You'd get yourself into a tangle with him," said Locke. "He'd most likely go around telling folks you wanted to steal his island if you talked with him about it."

      "I'll go slowly and I may get his confidence after awhile."

      "Well, I wish you luck," said Locke. "I'm going to make the Thursday boat."

      "I wasn't thinking of going on this trip for a couple of weeks," Trask hastened to say.

      "Hong Kong for mine," said Locke.

      "Dad! Come here, please," called Marjorie. "Captain Dinshaw wants to go to his island. It seems to me that you men who are looking for something to do might help him out."

      "I'll give him ten pesos for one of those pictures," said Locke.

      "The other for me at the same price," said Trask.

      "Stingies!" cried Marjorie. "If I were a man, I'd go find his island."

      "Perhaps I will," said Trask.

      "None of this Count of Monte Cristo stuff for me," said Locke, as he laid down a bill before Dinshaw. "Say, captain, I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll pay your passage home first class if you'll go so that you can get back to your relatives. Now you can't say I'm a piker, Marge."

      "Ten pesos!" whispered Dinshaw, staring at the bill. "Thank ye kindly, sir. I'll make ye all rich."

      "But how about going home?" said Locke. "I'll fix you up with some clothes. This is no place for an old man like you."

      "Home!" said Dinshaw. "I'm at the Sailors' Home."

      "But you ought to be back in the States."

      "I'm goin' back to my island, that's what," insisted Dinshaw. "Jarrow said he'd take me."

      "Dad, you said I could go anywhere I wanted on this trip," pouted Marjorie.

      "Where do you want to go, Miss Trinkets?"

      "I think it would be gorgeous fun to find this island. I've never done anything romantic in my life, and I've always wanted to elope, or something. I'll run away with a drummer in a band—or something like that, if I have to go home without finding an island—a tropical island, with a wreck, too—and sailors buried on it—and gold! I'm for it, strong."

      "Not so strong as I am for a touch of cool weather," laughed Locke. "That reminds me, it's time for another soda——"

      "Dad!"

      But Locke disappeared into the hall, laughing, saying something about Timbuctoo and other places he would not care to visit.

      "And he's finding fault about having to live in tourist hotels and listen to bored guides! And here's a chance to get off the main stamping ground, as he calls it, and help a poor old man."

      "We don't like to get far from the comforts of civilization, after all," said Trask. "But I don't know of anything I'd rather do than take you and your father cruising."

      "I wish there wasn't any old Thursday boat," wailed Marjorie. "We might argue him into going if we had more time."

      "You've got to miss that Thursday boat," declared Trask. "We ought to be able to kidnap him or something."

      "What's the name?" asked Dinshaw, rising from the table and putting on his hat.

      "Locke," said Marjorie. "Mr. Locke. You come up again to-morrow and see us."

      "I'll have to paint another picter," said Dinshaw.

      "Here," said Trask. "You take this one with you, and bring it back to-morrow, when I'll pay you twenty pesos for it. That'll give you an excuse for coming back. And don't say a word to anybody."

      "Locke," murmured Dinshaw. "Mr. Locke."

      "You ought to eat some more," said Marjorie.

      "Can't stop," said Dinshaw, gathering up the other picture, which he had not unwrapped. "Can't wait for the tide. I'll go see Jarrow. He said he'd take me."

      "Now look here," said Trask. "Don't you say a word to anybody. Understand? Don't tell anybody!"

      "I'm a clam, sir, a clam," said Dinshaw, solemnly, and blinking his eyes at the sun which assailed him from the bare Luneta, he hurried down the steps and hastened away.

      "Poor old duffer," said Trask.

      "We've got to help him find his island," said Marjorie. "I'll tell you what to do. Dad wants to get up to Hong Kong because there's a man at the King Edward he can beat at billiards."

      "What's that got to do with it?" asked Trask, vaguely.

      "You're a regular man!" she retorted. "Can't you see? Can you play billiards?"

      "A little," admitted Trask.

      "Come up to our rooms and have tea," she said. "Then you get Dad into a game of billiards, play as well as you can and—lose."

      "A whale of an idea!" exclaimed Trask.

      "And don't say anything more about the island," warned Marjorie. "Dad's stubborn, but he's easy to handle. We'll act as if we didn't care a whoop about this Dinshaw business—until we miss the Thursday boat. Then we'll give him no rest. But remember, I'm for the Thursday boat. That's just to throw him off his guard. He's a dear old Dad, but sometimes he's balky."

CHAPTER III

       Table of Contents

Captain Dinshaw Pulls a Long Bow

       Table of Contents

      Below the customs house in Manila, close to the embankment of the Pasig River, on the Binondo side, opposite Fort Santiago and the Walled City, there is an ancient adobe building thatched with nipa. Its narrow door opens on the waterfront. High and narrow windows, devoid of glass or shell, are mere slits cut through the walls. Seen from the river, they have a striking resemblance to the gun-ports of an ancient battleship.

      This place is known to sailormen the world over as "The Cuartel" and probably takes its name from the fact that it was a sort of block house used by the Spanish, to hold the approaches to the river. It stands at the head of a narrow little street which twists back into the native quarter of Tondo, and affords a haven for the mixed population which labours on the Mole—coolies, seamen, Chinese mess "boys," Tagalog cargadores, Lascar serangs, stalwart Sikh watchmen from the hemp and sugar godowns, squat Germans in white suits with pencils stuck in their sun helmets and wearing amber-coloured spectacles. British clerks with cargo lists, customs brokers, barking mates with blasphemous vocabularies, Scotch mechanics with parched throats, and all the underlings who have to do with ships and their freights.

      Here they all gather for their tipple and gossip, easy at friendships and quick at quarrels. They babble of things which their employers would have kept secret, their tongues limbered by drams from square-shouldered greenish bottles, Dutch as dykes, which line the shelves behind the bar.

      The Cuartel is owned by a black man from Batavia who calls himself Vanderzee. His mother was a Kling. He was berth-deck cook of a gunboat, by his own report, and "Jack o' the Dust" in a river monitor up "China way." That's all anybody seems to know about him, and it is suspected that he has his own reasons for keeping a clove hitch on his tongue about himself.

      There are legends about fortunes which have been made out of bits of news gleaned from conversations before the bar of the Cuartel. The lampman of a Blackpool tramp remarked over his peg of rum that his skipper liked