round and round the room, and through and through the tunnel;
and lastly we swam the tin ironclad in the bath, with the soap-dish for
a pirate.

Next morning the air was rich with spices, porpoises rolled and
gambolled round the bows, and the South Sea Islands lay full in
view (they were the real South Sea Islands, of course--not the badly
furnished journeymen-islands that are to be perceived on the map). As
for the pirate brigantine and the man-of-war, I don't really know what
became of them. They had played their part very well, for the time,
but I wasn't going to bother to account for them, so I just let them
evaporate quietly. The islands provided plenty of fresh occupation. For
here were little bays of silvery sand, dotted with land-crabs; groves of
palm-trees wherein monkeys frisked and pelted each other with cocoanuts;
and caves, and sites for stockades, and hidden treasures significantly
indicated by skulls, in riotous plenty; while birds and beasts of every
colour and all latitudes made pleasing noises which excited the sporting
instinct.

The islands lay conveniently close together, which necessitated
careful steering as we threaded the devious and intricate channels that
separated them. Of course no one else could be trusted at the wheel, so
it is not surprising that for some time I quite forgot that there was
such a thing as a Princess on board. This is too much the masculine way,
whenever there's any real business doing. However, I remembered her as
soon as the anchor was dropped, and I went below and consoled her, and
we had breakfast together, and she was allowed to "pour out," which
quite made up for everything. When breakfast was over we ordered out
the captain's gig, and rowed all about the islands, and paddled, and
explored, and hunted bisons and beetles and butterflies, and found
everything we wanted. And I gave her pink shells and tortoises and great
milky pearls and little green lizards; and she gave me guineapigs, and
coral to make into, waistcoat-buttons; and tame sea-otters, and a real
pirate's powder-horn. It was a prolific day and a long-lasting one, and
weary were we with all our hunting and our getting and our gathering,
when at last we clambered into the captain's gig and rowed back to a
late tea.

The following day my conscience rose up and accused me. This was not
what I had come out to do. These triflings with pearls and parrakeets,
these al fresco luncheons off yams and bananas--the