and the entrance to the Great Blue Grotto is at the
foot of the mountain. According to our figures, the Boolooroo ought to
march into this Grotto a hundred years from next Thursday, but he is
trying to steal a hundred years and so perhaps he won't enter the Arch
of Phinis. Therefore, if you will please be patient for about a hundred
years, you will discover what happens to one who breaks the Law."

"Thank'e," remarked Cap'n Bill. "I don't expect to be very curious a
hundred years from now."

"Nor I," added Button-Bright, laughing at the whimsical speech. "But I
don't see how the Boolooroo is able to fool you all. Can't any of you
remember two or three hundred years back when he first began to rule?"

"No," said Ghip-Ghisizzle, "that's a long time to remember, and we
Blueskins try to forget all we can, especially whatever is unpleasant.
Those who remember are usually the unhappy ones; only those able to
forget find the most joy in life."

During this conversation they had been walking along the streets of the
Blue City, where many of the Blueskin inhabitants stopped to gaze
wonderingly at the sailor and the boy, whose strange appearance
surprised them. They were a nervous, restless people, and their
egg-shaped heads, set on the ends of long, thin necks, seemed so
grotesque to the strangers that they could scarcely forbear laughing at
them. The bodies of these people were short and round and their legs
exceptionally long, so when a Blueskin walked, he covered twice as much
ground at one step as Cap'n Bill or Button-Bright did. The women seemed
just as repellent as the men, and Button-Bright began to understand
that the Six Snubnosed Princesses were, after all, rather better
looking than most of the females of the Blue Country and so had a
certain right to be proud and haughty.

There were no horses nor cows in this land, but there were plenty of
blue goats, from which the people got their milk. Children tended the
goats--wee Blueskin boys and girls whose appearance was so comical that
Button-Bright laughed whenever he saw one of them.

Although the natives had never seen before this any human beings made
as Button-Bright and Cap'n Bill were, they took a strong dislike to the
strangers and several times threatened to attack them. Perhaps if
Ghip-Ghisizzle, who was their favorite, had not been present, they
would have mobbed our friends with vicious ill-will and might have
seriously injured them. But Ghip-Ghisizzle's