Patsy admiringly declared, "looked like a baby liner." While she was
yacht-built in all her lines and fittings, she was far from being merely
a pleasure craft, but had been designed by the elder Jones, the boy's
father, to afford communication between the Island of Sangoa, in the
lower South Seas, and the continent of America.

Sangoa is noted for its remarkable pearl fisheries, which were now owned
and controlled entirely by this youth; but his father, an experienced
man of affairs, had so thoroughly established the business of production
and sale that little remained for his only son and heir to do, more than
to invest the profits that steadily accrued and to care for the great
fortune left him. Whether he was doing this wisely or not no one--not
even his closest friends--could tell. But he was frank and friendly
about everything else.

They went aboard the _Arabella_ and were received by that grim and
grizzled old salt, Captain Carg, with the same wooden indifference he
always exhibited. But Patsy detected a slight twinkle in the shrewd gray
eyes that made her feel they were welcome. Carg, a seaman of vast
experience, was wholly devoted to his young master. Indeed, the girls
suspected that young Jones was a veritable autocrat in his island, as
well as aboard his ship. Everyone of the Sangoans seemed to accept his
dictation, however imperative it might be, as a matter of course, and
the gray old captain--who had seen much of the world--was not the least
subservient to his young master.

On the other hand, Jones was a gentle and considerate autocrat,
unconsciously imitating his lately deceased father in his kindly
interest in the welfare of all his dependents. These had formerly been
free-born Americans, for when the Island of Sangoa was purchased it had