and, with all
due respect, pluck him from the branch as if he were a fruit.

And then the questions, the answers, the explanations which passed!

"Uncle Will! You?"

"Yes! me!"

"And how did you discover Phina Island?"

"Phina Island!" answered William W. Kolderup. "You should say Spencer
Island! Well, it wasn't very difficult. I bought it six months ago!"

"Spencer Island!"

"And you gave my name to it, you dear Godfrey!" said the young lady.

"The new name is a good one, and we will keep to it," answered the
uncle; "but for geographers this is Spencer Island, only three days'
journey from San Francisco, on which I thought it would be a good plan
for you to serve your apprenticeship to the Crusoe business!"

"Oh! Uncle! Uncle Will! What is it you say?" exclaimed Godfrey. "Well,
if you are in earnest, I can only answer that I deserved it! But then,
Uncle Will, the wreck of the _Dream_?"

"Sham!" replied William W. Kolderup, who had never seemed in such a good
humour before. "The _Dream_ was quietly sunk by means of her water
ballast, according to the instructions I had given Turcott. You thought
she sank for good, but when the captain saw that you and Tartlet had got
safely to land he brought her up and steamed away. Three days later he
got back to San Francisco, and he it is who has brought us to Spencer
Island on the date we fixed!"

"Then none of the crew perished in the wreck?"

"None--unless it was the unhappy Chinaman who hid himself away on board
and could not be found!"

"But the canoe?"

"Sham! The canoe was of my own make."

"But the savages?"

"Sham! The savages whom luckily you did not shoot!"

"But Carefinotu?"

"Sham! Carefinotu was my faithful Jup Brass, who played his part of
Friday marvellously well, as I see."

"Yes," answered Godfrey. "He twice saved my life--once from a bear, once
from a tiger--"

"The bear was sham! the tiger was sham!" laughed William W. Kolderup.
"Both of them were stuffed with straw, and landed before you saw them
with Jup Brass and his companions!"

"But he moved his head and his paws!"

"By means of a spring which Jup Brass had fixed during the night a few
hours before the meetings which were prepared for you."

"What! all of them?" repeated Godfrey, a little ashamed at having been
taken in by these artifices.

"Yes! Things were going too smoothly in your island, and we had to get
up a little excitement!"

"Then," answered Godfrey, who had beg