"Subjects?"
"Yes, my people."
The Captain looked at John and John edged off from the stranger and made a sign suggestive of deficient mentality.
"Your people?" asked Captain Cromwell.
"Yes, man. Why, I am the King of Tortilla Key."
John renewed the aforesaid sign and edged still farther away. Captain Cromwell laughed. The stranger chimed in.
"Does sound funny, don't it. Fact is I made myself King. I've got a crown up at the palace there. Rusty tin saucepan afore I knocked the bottom out."
The Captain laughed again.
"You're an odd fish," he remarked. "What was your name before you were King?"
"Me? Oh! I'm a 'down Easter.' Peleg Timrod of Squan, Mass., U. S. A. Of course, I knowed Peleg was no royal name, so I just dubbed myself Victor Fust when I annexed this here island."