"We'll run for the Cocos-Keelin' Islands, Nigel, an' refit."

"Are the Keeling Islands far off?"

"Lift up your head and look straight along the bridge of your nose, lad,
and you'll see them. They're an interesting group, are the Keelin'
Islands. Volcanic, they are, with a coral top-dressin', so to speak. Sit
down here an' I'll tell 'ee about 'em."

Nigel shut up the telescope through which he had been examining the
thin, blue line on the horizon that indicated the islands in question,
and sat down on the cabin skylight beside his father.

"They've got a romantic history too, though a short one, an' are set
like a gem on the bosom of the deep blue sea--"

"Come, father, you're drifting out of your true course--that's
poetical!"

"I know it, lad, but I'm only quotin' your mother. Well, you must know
that the Keelin' Islands--we call them Keelin' for short--were
uninhabited between fifty and sixty years ago, when a Scotsman named
Ross, thinking them well situated as a port of call for the repair and
provisioning of vessels on their way to Australia and China, set his
heart on them and quietly took possession in the name of England. Then
he went home to fetch his wife and family of six children, intendin' to
settle on the islands for good. Returning in 1827 with the family and
fourteen adventurers, twelve of whom were English, one a Portugee and
one a Javanee, he found to his disgust that an Englishman named Hare had