162 MYSTIC ISLES 



all from the ken of the mate and of the South Seas. 



"Now," said Captain George Goeltz, "Bill here 

 could 'a' followed suit and sold the vessel. Of course 

 they had no papers except for the French group, but 

 in South America twenty-five years ago a piaster was 

 a piaster. Bill was square then, as he is now, and he 

 borrows enough money to buy gioib, and he steers right 

 back to Papeete. Gott im Himmel! Were the owners 

 glad to see that schooner again? Thc}^ had given her 

 up as gone for good when the husband told them his 

 wife had run away with the captain. That 's how Bill 

 got his certificate to command vessels in this archipelago, 

 which only Frenchmen can have." 



Goeltz picked up the "Daily Commercial News" of 

 San Francisco, and idly read out the list of missing 

 ships. There was only one in the Pacific of recent date 

 whose fate was utterly unknown. She was the schooner 

 El Dorado, which had left Oregon months before ft)r 

 Chile, and had not been sighted in all that time. The 

 shipping paper said: 



What has become of the El Dorado, it is, of course, impos- 

 sible to say with any degree of accuracy, but one thing is ahnost 

 certain, and that is that the likelihood of her ever being heard 

 of again is now practically without the range of possibility. 

 Nevertheless slie may still be afloat though in a waterlogged 

 condition and drifting about in the trackless wastes of the 

 South Pacific, Then again she may have struck one of the 

 countless reefs that infest that portion of the globe, some 

 entirely invisible and others just about awash. She is now one 

 hundred and eighty-nine days out, and the voyage has rarely 

 taken one hundred days. She was reported in lat. 35 : 40 N., 

 long. 126 : 30 W., IT-l days ago. 



"There '11 be no salvage on her," said Captain 



