rd you,
for he seems impatient to join you in your little trip to the islands."

"I'll put it off to some future day, Dom. But isn't it a pity that such
pretty places should be spoiled by such greedy and cruel monsters?"

"And yet they _must_ have been made for some good purpose," suggested
Pauline.

"I rather suspect," said Dominick, "that if game and fish only knew who
shoot and catch them, and afterwards eat them, they might be inclined to
call man greedy and cruel."

"But we can't help that Dom. We must live, you know."

"So says or thinks the shark, no doubt, when he swallows a man."

While the abstruse question, to which the shark had thus given rise, was
being further discussed, the explorers returned to the thicket, where
they buried the skeleton beside the other graves. A close search was
then made for any object that might identify the unfortunates or afford
some clue to their history, but nothing of the sort was found.

"Strange," muttered Dominick, on leaving the spot after completing their
task. "One would have expected that, with a wrecked ship to fall back
upon, they would have left behind them evidences of some sort--
implements, or books, or empty beef-casks,--but there is literally
nothing."

"Perhaps," suggested Pauline, "the men did not belong to this wreck.
They may have landed as we have done out of a small boat, and the vessel
we now see may have been driven here after they were dead."

"True, Pina, it may have been so. However, the matter must remain a
mystery for the present. Meanwhile we will go and explore the low land
behind our reef."

"Isn't it strange, Dom, that we should become landed proprietors in this
fashion?" remarked Otto, as they walked along.

"And that, too," added Pauline, "at a time when our hopes were lowest
and our case most desperate."

"'Tis a magnificent estate," said Dominick, "of which we will constitute
Pina the Queen, myself the Prime Minister, and Otto the army."

To this Otto objected that, as it was the business of an army to defend
the people and keep them in order, there was no use for an army, seeing
that there were no people; but Dominick replied that a queen and prime
minister formed part of a people, and that an army was required to
defend _them_.

"To keep them in order, you should say," retorted Otto, "for that will
clearly be my chief duty if I accept the situation. Well, I've no
objection, on the whole, to be an army; but, please, r