This left Inez Hawthorne with no one to talk to excepting Fred Sanders, who seemed in better spirits than usual. When they had discussed the voyage, and he had given her as good an account as he could of the island toward which they were hastening, and after she had answered all his questions as best she could, she turned upon him and asked:
“How long did you say you had spent in these islands?”
“As nearly as I can recollect, it is about five years.”
“And, as you are now seventeen, you must have been only twelve years old when you first came here.”
“That agrees with my figuring,” said Sanders, with a nod of his head. “You can’t be far out of the way.”
“Where did you live before that?”
“Well, I lived in a good many places––that is, for two years. I was on the Atlantic and on the Pacific and––well, it would take me a good long while to tell of all that I passed through. I may as well own up to you, Inez, that it was a wild, rough life for a man, even without taking into account the fact that I was a boy.”
“Then you went to sea when you were only ten years old?”
“That also coincides with my mathematical calculations,” replied Sanders, somewhat embarrassed, for he saw they were approaching delicate ground.