There is a floating island in the sea where no explorer has set foot, or, setting foot, has returned to tell of what he saw. Lying at our very doors, in the direct path of every steamer from the Gulf of Mexico to Europe, it is less known than is the frozen pole. Encyclopedias pass over it lightly; atlases dismiss it with but a slight mention; maps do not attempt to portray its ever-shifting outlines; even the Sunday newspapers, so keen to grasp everything of interest, ignore it. But on the decks

As the prisoner and Officer Jackson, handcuffed together, came up the gang-plank, Renfrew, the attorney, standing on the promenade deck above, turned from his contemplation of the city of San Juan as it lay green and white in the afternoon sun, and bent forward. “By George,” he cried, exultingly, “that’s Frank Howard! He’s caught! Caught here, of all places in the world!” With hands tight gripped on the rail he watched the two men until they disappeared below; then, eager to share his discovery

When Dorothy Fairfax came on deck again the sun was dropping fast toward the horizon. A gusty breeze was blowing and the steamer was pitching slightly in the short, choppy seas that characterize West Indian waters. Movement had become unpleasant to those inclined to seasickness and this, combined with the comparative lightness of the passenger list, caused the deck of the Queen to be nearly deserted. Dorothy was glad of it. She wanted solitude in order to think in peace, and there was seldom sol

An hour later the deck had grown dangerous, even for men. The Queen drove diagonally through the waves, rolling far to right and to left; and at each roll a miniature torrent swept aboard her, hammered on her tightly-fastened doors, and passed, cataract-wise, back into the deep. Scarcely could the officers, high on the bridge, clinging to stanchions and shielded by strong sheets of canvas, keep their footing. Overhead hooted the gale. It grew dark. To the gloom of the storm had been added the bl

Consciousness came slowly back to Frank Howard. He raised his head, but otherwise lay still, painfully reconstructing the world around him. So tightly was he wedged between a broken ventilator and a skylight coamings that it was only with considerable difficulty that he finally managed to lift himself to a sitting position and stare dizzily around. He was alone on the deck, which had become much steeper than he remembered it in the gray dawn. Evidently another bulkhead forward had given way, all

As Dorothy fell Howard caught her in his arms and laid her upon the sofa. Then he faced Jackson. “Nice thing, this!” he remarked, grimly. “A very nice thing, considering the state of affairs. No!” he interjected, as he saw Jackson’s eyes wander to the girl. “Don’t worry about her just now. She’s exhausted, anyway, and she’ll sleep it off and be all the better when she rouses. Meanwhile, there’s work for us. We all need food, and it’s imperative that we should find some at once. Come.” The angle

Two weeks passed without change in the situation, except that their end saw the Queen still deeper in the tangle. The breeze from the west had continued, but day by day had grown fainter, until at last it barely cooled the faces of the weary passengers. Day by day, too, the weed and the wreckage in the tangle grew thicker. Here and there floated broken spars, fragments of shattered deck-houses, moss-grown planks, Jacob’s-ladders, and all the fugitive spoil of the sea. Broken boats, bottom upward

It was late that night before the voyagers dropped into uneasy slumber. The wonder of their situation, suddenly brought home to them, had roused them all to unusual volubility. In the excitement consequent on the discovery of the massed wrecks even Jackson forgot his suspicions, and the three talked together freely. Howard had promised that they should join the wrecks, and they had done so. Now he would have a chance to keep his other promise to get them out; in the first flush of arrival they d

When the two men left Dorothy alone in the Queen, she was not uneasy, although she did not welcome being alone in that desolate place. She had so grown to depend on Howard’s companionship, and to take comfort even in Jackson’s bear-like presence about the ship, that she felt a queer sinking at heart when they left her. Still, she realized that it was necessary that some one who understood thoroughly what was wanted should explore, and she knew that Howard was the only one possessed of that infor

Shortly after dinner the entire party set out for the village, which was, it seemed, only half a mile away, and would have been reached by Jackson and Howard had they chanced to go in the right direction. Bill and Joe knew all the easiest routes across the wreckage, and led the newcomers by one, which, though not quite direct, yet involved the minimum of effort on Dorothy’s part. Nevertheless, progress was necessarily slow, and it took nearly an hour to go the so-called half mile. When the villa

For one moment, as the men closed in on him, Howard struggled with a furious desire to wrest a cutlass from one of them, and with it exact terms from the others. The odds, though great, were not necessarily overwhelming, and victory would mean much. Had he stood on equal terms before the law, he would have risked everything in an immediate fight. But he did not stand even. Against him as a convict fighting for freedom, Forbes could throw the entire population of his colony; even Jackson might jo

In accepting Captain Forbes’s invitation to supper Dorothy had taken it for granted that the other two survivors of the Queen were included, and was somewhat startled to find that they were not. “Gallegher insisted on your friends eating with him,” explained Forbes, with a smile. “He declared that I might have the best, but that I shouldn’t hog everything, and I had to give in.” Dorothy accepted the explanation, but her heart beat anxiously. Nor was her anxiety lessened by Captain Forbes’s attit

Dorothy’s hours of grace passed all too quickly. The girl’s natural impulse was to turn at once to Howard for aid, and when the moments sped by without bringing him, she turned to Mrs. Joyce and learned of his imprisonment. “But don’t you be worryin’ about that, miss,” said the kindly Irishwoman. “It’s safe and sound he is. The cap’n is just kapin’ him locked up till after the wedding.” “There’ll be no wedding,” flashed Dorothy. “An’ why not? It’s worse you might do, my dear. All men are cantank

The deck had been decorated as for a gala occasion. Bright-colored flags were twined everywhere under the cool, airy awnings; canaries, in gilded cages, hung about, each carolling at the top of its tiny throat; the members of the colony were all standing about, each dressed in garments which, though perhaps lacking somewhat in taste and style, at least left nothing to be desired in the way of color or ornament. The scene, though odd, was undoubtedly bright and cheerful. Mother Joyce led Dorothy

Night was falling fast as Howard and Dorothy, with Jackson close behind, made their way slowly back to the Queen over the tangled wreckage, following the trail blazed by Howard two days before. The Joyces had promised to join them later. Except for necessary help and caution about the road, the three walked and climbed for the most part in silence, each immersed in thought. Only once did Dorothy speak. “Captain Forbes said that his men had taken possession of the Queen and were removing her stor

Despite the nerve and body-racking experiences of the day before, Howard was up and on deck the next morning at the first peep of day, straining his eyes for sight of Jackson and the Joyces. The need for instant action was strong upon him. He did not doubt that Forbes had sent the snake upon him, just as (judging from Mother Joyce’s tale to Dorothy) he had before sent it against one of Prudence Gallegher’s ill-fated husbands, and he only wondered that the doughty captain had not followed up the

It is one thing to lay a course even in the open sea, and it is quite another to follow it. Wind, waves, and currents often drive a vessel from the way she wishes to go; and all of these had acted on the wreck-path, seemingly conspiring to make difficult the line of progress that Howard had mapped out. Again and again he had to make long detours to pass some insurmountable wreck that lay across his path, and finally he had to turn aside from it altogether to skirt a narrow but impassable channel

Five tons of gold, worth about three million dollars, is not near so hard to move as five tons of coal, for instance, especially when it is put in seventy-five pound bars and there is plenty of tackle handy. It took Jackson, Joyce, and Willoughby only about two hours to dump the lead out of the submarine and replace it with the gold—surely the richest ballast the world ever saw. Meanwhile Howard, after stationing Dorothy and Mother Joyce in elevated positions where they could watch for the possi

One , two, three hours slid by, and, at last, Howard, his eyes fixed on the gage of the accumulators, saw that the power was getting low, and began to watch anxiously for some gleam of light that, striking down through the water, might show a break in the mantle of weed overhead. In vain! Everywhere blackness ruled. Several times he slowed down and turned off the headlight, hoping that, with its effulgence removed, he might see the longed-for gap. After each attempt he went back to driving the S

Long before dawn Howard was astir. Possessing in an eminent degree the not very rare faculty of being able to awake at any hour desired, he had set his mental alarm-clock for four o’clock, and, in spite of his fatigue, had awakened within fifteen minutes of that time. Without disturbing any of the others, who lay stretched in more or less uneasy postures on the comfortless floor of the Seashark, he made his way first to the conning-tower for a last examination of the fixtures there; then to the

The Sargasso Sea will soon be robbed of half its terrors. The Seashark Wrecking Company, with Howard at its head, and all his party as share-holders, has been formed to recover the great wealth still existing on the derelicts in the sea. It has opened communication with the wreck-pack by a paddle-wheel steamer that is expected to maintain a reasonably clear channel through the weed. The company is projecting a series of relief stations, and will keep up a constant patrol all round the wreck-pack