you'd have no occasion to
reason me out of error, or convince me of truth. Take the subject of
poetry, now--"

"Luff," said Captain Roy, sternly, to the man at the wheel.

When the man at the wheel had gone through the nautical evolution
involved in "luff," the captain turned to his son and said abruptly--

"We'll run for the Cocos-Keelin' Islands, Nigel, an' refit."

"Are the Keeling Islands far off?"

"Lift up your head and look straight along the bridge of your nose, lad,
and you'll see them. They're an interesting group, are the Keelin'
Islands. Volcanic, they are, with a coral top-dressin', so to speak. Sit
down here an' I'll tell 'ee about 'em."

Nigel shut up the telescope through which he had been examining the
thin, blue line on the horizon that indicated the islands in question,
and sat down on the cabin skylight beside his father.

"They've got a romantic history too, though a short one, an' are set
like a gem on the bosom of the deep blue sea--"

"Come, father, you're drifting out of your true course--that's
poetical!"

"I know it, lad, but I'm only quotin' your mother. Well, you must know
that the Keelin' Islands--we call them Keelin' for short--were
uninhabited between fifty and sixty years ago, when a Scotsman named
Ross, thinking them well situated as a port of call for the repair and
provisioning of vessels on their way to Australia and China, set his
heart on them and quietly took possession in the name of England. Then
he went home to fetch his wife and family of six children, intendin' to
settle on the islands for good. Returning in 1827 with the family and
fourteen adventurers, twelve of whom were English, one a Portugee and
one a Javanee, he found to his disgust that an Englishman named Hare had
stepped in before him and taken possession. This Hare was a very bad
fellow; a rich man who wanted to live like a Rajah, with lots o' native
wives and retainers, an' be a sort of independent prince. Of course he
was on bad terms at once with Ross, who, finding that things were going
badly, felt that it would be unfair to hold his people to the agreement
which was made when he thought the whole group was his own, so he
offered to release them. They all, except two men and one woman,
accepted the release and went off in a gun-boat that chanced to touch
there at the time. For a good while Hare and his rival lived there--the
one tryin' to get the Dutch, the other to induce the English Government
to