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dear that lagoon for us. Then, after allowing a month for the shell to rot, we can load up and make for home waters—made men for the rest of our lives."

For a while the two sat silently reviewing the prospect before them. Then Dave rose to his feet with something like a sigh.

"It seems too good to be true, Mark, after all the ill-luck we've had on this cruise."

Into the other's heavy-lidded black eyes there came a suspicious gleam. But the next moment he burst into a hearty laugh.

"True? O' course it's true. Haven't I just been a tellin' you?" he said. "Everything's fallen into our hands. The shell is ours for the takin'—the natives are friendly——"

"But are they friendly, Mark?" interrupted the boy. "They may be concealing their real feelings to put us off our guard. A sudden rush when we were unprepared, and they'd swamp us by their very numbers."

Mark rose to his feet and dapped the younger man heartily on the shoulder.

"No fear o' that, my lad. Why, the king is sendin' his own darter to us as a hostage for his good behavior."

"His daughter?"

"Ay, the one I told you about—her that can speak English. She's goin' to sling her hammock aboard here until we've got the shell under hatches. They're bringin' her on board tomorrow, and a prettier or daintier hostage you couldn't wish for. Come, we'll have a peg in honor of our guest."

He took two glasses from the locker and filled them from the decanter on the table. His lips were twisted into a sardonic smile as he handed one to Dave and raised the other aloft.

"Here's to Lèla, the belle of Tuvongo—our hostage!"

Even as he raised the glass to his lips his figure became shadowy and indistinct, and the dull boom of the surf gave place to the twittering of sparrows on the lawn. The tropical isle had vanished. I was back in England, within a few yards of my own home. The only things unchanged were the walls of the deckhouse of the Euphrates.

For some time afterward I continued to sit still, my mind frantically endeavoring to recall and analyze the impressions it had received. Plain, practical sense seemed to tell me that the whole thing was nothing but a particularly intense dream; yet that commonplace explanation was far from satisfying me. The episode had been too detailed, too real, too much like an actual, personal experience for it to have been a mere fantasm conjured up by the sleeping brain. There must be some deeper, more logical explanation.

Even then I was far from suspecting that I possessed psychic powers—indeed I had always regarded such powers in others with a good deal of skepticism. Still, I felt that there must be some influence, some latent power—a legacy, maybe, of the stirred emotions of those who had lived there before—that gave the old walls the power of reproducing, to the unconscious or semi-conscious mind, some of the scenes that had been enacted within them. But, whatever the explanation might be, I was determined to make another effort to see the outcome of the strange drama whose opening had been so unexpectedly revealed.

George, of course, had his own theory.

"H'm, liver out of order," was his verdict when I had told my story. "You keep too late hours and do too much scribbling. Come have a round at golf."

I gravely thanked him for his good advice, but the next afternoon saw me lying on the decldiouse settee in the hope of witnessing a continuation of my vision. My mind, however, was far too excited to allow me to sleep. In vain I tried every