d for Remington while he made his fortune abroad.
Was he going to go back to her penniless? "Even if this doesn't turn out
right," he went on, "we'll have reached another part of the world, with a
fresh chance of making money, instead of being poor in England, that
breeding-ground for tame rabbits, where poverty is the unforgiveable sin."
"I liked him for those words," said Thalassa, "for they came from a man
whose thoughts were after the style of my own. 'Twas they decided the
other chap, and next morning we set out for Capetown. From there we got
passages in a cargo boat for Sydney."

Charles found it easier to visualize this picture than the former. The
departure of the three upon such a wild romantic venture had in its
elements all the audacity, greed, and splendour of youth, and he also was
young.

Thalassa went on with his story.

During the voyage to Sydney, Robert Turold used to talk to him on deck at
nights after Remington had gone to his bunk. It was in these solitary deck
tramps under glittering stars that Thalassa first heard from the other's
lips of the Turrald title: the title for which the fortune he was seeking
was merely a stepping stone--the means to obtain it. "Night after night he
talked of nothing else," said Thalassa, "and I knew he would do what he
wanted to do." It was easy to gather from his story that his original
admiration for Robert Turold soon grew into a deeper and stronger feeling.
There was something in the dead man's masterful ambitious character which
exercised a reluctantly conceded but undoubted fascination upon his
companion's fierce spirit.

Such were their relations when they reached Sydney and set out on a
further voyage to the other place which Thalassa was so reluctant to name.
On arriving at the "other place" they made their way to its east coast,
which was the starting point of their journey to the island. From a brown
man living on the coast Thalassa hired a smart little ketch which the
three of them could easily handle, and in this they embarked for the
island from a beach which curved like a white tusk around a blue bay.

They did not reach the island for six days--through baffling winds, and
not because they did not steer a right course. As Thalassa had said, there
was no difficulty in finding it, for they had only been one day at sea
when the smouldering smoke of the distant volcanic cone came into vision,
making an unholy mark against the clear sky which they never