were, oh, such lots of
houses! but there was a time before that when we come such a long,
long way in the cars. We rode and rode, and I guess we must have come
from the moon, for we was ten years on the road."

"Do you remember what sort of looking place the moon was?"

"It was just like San Francisco--that is, it was full of houses."

The officers looked at each other with a smile, and the mate said:

"It's plain enough what that means. She has come from New York, over
the Union Pacific, and her trip was probably the longest of her
life."

"Do you remember your father and mother?"

"I don't know," said Inez, with a look of perplexity on her young face
which it was not pleasant to see. "Sometimes I remember or dream of
them, before we took such a long ride on the cars. My mother used to
hold me on her lap and kiss me, and so did my father, and then there
was crying, and something dreadful happened in the house, and then I
can't remember anything more until I was on the cars."

"It may be all right," said Captain Bergen to his mate, "for this
could occur without anything being amiss."

"It is possible; but I have a conviction that there is something wrong
about the whole business. I believe, in short, that the person who
placed her on board the steamer _Polynesia_ had no claim upon her at
all."

"That, in fact, the man stole her?"

"That's it, exactly; and still further, I don't believe she has any
father or mother in Japan, and that if we had gone thither we should
have lost all the time and accomplished nothing."

"It may be, Abe, that you are right," said the captain, who held a
great admiration for his mate, "but I must say you can build a fraud
and conspiracy on the smallest foundation of any man I ever knew. But,
Abe, you may be right, I say, and if you are, it's just as well that
we didn't go on a fool's errand to Tokio, after all."

"The truth will soon be known, captain."

CHAPTER X

THE MUTINEERS

A few degrees south of the equator, the schooner _Coral_ ran into a
tempest of such fury that with all the skilful seamanship of her
captain and crew, and the admirable qualities of the schooner itself,
she narrowly escaped foundering.

There were two days when she was in such imminent peril that not an
eye was closed in slumber, excepting in the case of little Inez
Hawthorne, who felt the situation only to the extent that it compelled
her to stay close in the cabin, while the vessel pitc