Beth, and went on to give him the latest
tidings. Finding that the war was the absorbing topic in this little
household, the boy developed new interest in it and the morning passed
quickly away.

Jones stayed to lunch and then Mr. Merrick's automobile took them all to
the river to visit the beautiful yacht _Arabella_, which was already,
they found, attracting a good deal of attention in the harbor, where
beautiful yachts are no rarity.

The _Arabella_ was intended by her builders for deep sea transit and as
Patsy admiringly declared, "looked like a baby liner." While she was
yacht-built in all her lines and fittings, she was far from being merely
a pleasure craft, but had been designed by the elder Jones, the boy's
father, to afford communication between the Island of Sangoa, in the
lower South Seas, and the continent of America.

Sangoa is noted for its remarkable pearl fisheries, which were now owned
and controlled entirely by this youth; but his father, an experienced
man of affairs, had so thoroughly established the business of production
and sale that little remained for his only son and heir to do, more than
to invest the profits that steadily accrued and to care for the great
fortune left him. Whether he was doing this wisely or not no one--not
even his closest friends--could tell. But he was frank and friendly
about everything else.

They went aboard the _Arabella_ and were received by that grim and
grizzled old salt, Captain Carg, with the same wooden indifference he
always exhibited. But Patsy detected a slight twinkle in the shrewd gray
eyes that made her feel they were welcome. Carg, a seaman of vast
experience, was wholly devoted to his young master. Indeed, the girls
suspected that young Jones was a veritable autocrat in his island, as
well as aboard his ship. Everyone of the Sangoans seemed to accept his
dictation, however imperative it might be, as a matter of course, and
the gray old captain--who had seen much of the world--was not the least
subservient to his young master.

On the other hand, Jones was a gentle and considerate autocrat,
unconsciously imitating his lately deceased father in his kindly
interest in the welfare of all his dependents. These had formerly been
free-born Americans, for when the Island of Sangoa was purchased it had
no inhabitants.

This fortunate--or perhaps unfortunate--youth had never been blessed
with a given name, more than the simple initial "A." The failure of hi