* * * * *

Underneath us, while the red-cheeked and golden-haired Steve uttered
his puzzling sentences in English, I heard from time to time the
heavy tread of Captain Benson. He was, doubtless, living over again
the hours of terror and resolution on the El Dorado and in the boat,
and seeking to find words to amplify his log by his memories. I
heard him sit down and get up more than once; while opposite me in an
easy-chair, with his glass of Schiedam schnapps beside him, was the
virile Dutchman, hammering in his breast-swelling story of danger and
courage, of starvation and storm. I sighed for a dictaphone in which
the original Dutch-English might be recorded for the delight of others.

Alex Simoneau came back after a night of the hospitality of M. Lontane,
and soon was joyous again, telling his wondrous epic of the main to
the beach-combers in the parc de Bougainville or in the Paris saloon,
where the brown and white toilers of land and sea make merry.

"A man that goes to sea is a fool," he said, with a bang of his fist
on the table that made the schnapps dance in its heavy bottle. "My
people in Massachusetts are all right, and like a crazy man I will
go to sea when I could work in a mill or on a farm. They must think
I'm dead by now."

Alex was corroborative of all that Steve said, but I could not pin
him down to hours or days. He was too exalted by his present happy
fate--penniless, jobless, family in mourning, but healthy, safe, and
full-stomached, not to omit an ebullience of spirits incited by the
continuing wonder of each new listener and the praise for his deeds
and by the conviviality of his admirers.

Alex was sure of one point, and that was that the El Dorado was
overloaded.

"Dose shkvarehet shkippers vould dake a cheese-box to sea mit a cargo
of le't," commented Steve. "All dey care for is de havin' de yob. De
owner he don't care if de vessel sink mit de insurance."

When Alex had shuffled out of the cottage, I gave the Dutchman the
course of his narrative again.

"You were safe on Easter Island, and ill from stuffing yourself with
fresh mutton," I prompted, "And now what?"

Steve spat over the rail.

"Ram, lam', sheep, und muddon for a hundred und fife days. Dere vas
noding odder. Dot's a kveer place, dot Easter Island, mit shtone gotts
lyin' round und det fulcanoes, und noding good to eat. Ve liffed in a
house de English manager gif us. Dere's a Chile meat gompany owns de
island