grimly.

The other sailors looked at each other and laughed.

"We landed to get water," explained the boatswain, "and chanced to
stumble across human foot-prints. Knowing the island was deserted, we
decided to follow up the tracks. And here we are. I guess you're glad to
see us."

Armitage was silent.

"Thank God!" murmured Grace. "Where is your ship? What is it?"

"The _Saucy Polly_, of Boston, Mass., and as fine a whaler as you ever
saw. We're anchored on the other side of the island. I guess that's why
you didn't see us."

"An American ship--God be praised," murmured Grace, clasping her hands.
"Will you take us home?"

"That we will, Miss. We couldn't leave you here."

Overcome with emotion, Grace suddenly burst into tears.

CHAPTER XVII.

Fifth Avenue presented its customary animated and brilliant picture of
refined cosmopolitan life. The sidewalks were crowded to the curb with
stylishly dressed promenaders, the roadway blocked with smart
automobiles and handsome equipages. The all New York of fashion and
wealth was taking its afternoon sunning.

For the foreigner making a study of our national manners, the Avenue's
five-o'clock parade any fine afternoon during the season presents a
scene as typically American as he may expect to find. Here in this one
narrow, splendid thoroughfare, stretching in a noble line, as the crow
flies, from Twenty-third Street away up to the Nineties, is concentrated
the fabulous, incalculable wealth of the United States. Here, side by
side, dwell the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, the Vanderbilts, the
Astors, the Goulds, the Harrimans, the Morgans, the Whitneys, and other
giants of finance, whose fortunes aggregate thousands of millions of
dollars! Lined on either side of the street with the marble palaces of
its multi-millionaires, its roadway jammed with carriages and
automobiles kept in order by picturesque mounted police, its sidewalks
thronged with pretty, stylish girls, and men and women famous in art,
music, politics, science and literature--New York's most exclusive
thoroughfare is perhaps the one place where the American plutocracy is
on exhibition in all its aggressive opulence. The show street of New
York, it is not laid with rails for electric cars like other
thoroughfares of the metropolis. Wagons and trucks not having special
business there are forbidden to traverse it. The poor man understands
that it is the exclusive domain of the very rich, that he ha