I'll soon have the
town illuminated all over, whether it rains or not."

The consul had been very silent and indifferent, during supper, to all
around him. Now he looked up with some show of interest.

"How much longer is it going to rain, do you think?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know," said Stedman, critically. "Not more than two
months, I should say." The consul rubbed his rheumatic leg and sighed,
but said nothing.

The Bradleys returned about ten o'clock, and came in very sheepishly.
The consul had gone off to pay the boatmen who had brought them, and
Albert in his absence assured the sailors that there was not the least
danger of their being sent away. Then he turned into one of the beds,
and Stedman took one in another room, leaving the room he had occupied
heretofore for the consul. As he was saying good-night, Albert
suggested that he had not yet told them how he came to be on a deserted
island; but Stedman only laughed and said that that was a long story,
and that he would tell him all about it in the morning. So Albert went
off to bed without waiting for the consul to return, and fell asleep,
wondering at the strangeness of his new life, and assuring himself that
if the rain only kept up, he would have his novel finished in a month.

The sun was shining brightly when he awoke, and the palm-trees outside
were nodding gracefully in a warm breeze. From the court came the odor
of strange flowers, and from the window he could see the ocean
brilliantly blue, and with the sun coloring the spray that beat against
the coral reefs on the shore.

"Well, the consul can't complain of this," he said, with a laugh of
satisfaction; and pulling on a bath-robe, he stepped into the next room
to awaken Captain Travis. But the room was quite empty, and the bed
undisturbed. The consul's trunk remained just where it had been placed
near the door, and on it lay a large sheet of foolscap, with writing on
it, and addressed at the top to Albert Gordon. The handwriting was the
consul's. Albert picked it up and read it with much anxiety. It began
abruptly--

"The fishermen who brought us to this forsaken spot tell me that it
rains here six months in the year, and that this is the first month. I
came here to serve my country, for which I fought and bled, but I did
not come here to die of rheumatism and pneumonia. I can serve my
country better by staying alive; and whether it rains or not, I don't
like it. I have bee