"You can hear dozens of yarns like that about every coral island and cay in the Caribbean," I said.
"I know," he agreed. "And on a pleasure voyage it helps out wonderfully if you have some one along who can tell them. How would the old Spanish Main strike you as a winter cruising ground for the good ship Andromeda?"
It was at this point that I began to see a few rays of daylight—or thought I did.
"Show me the Andromeda's passenger list and I can tell better," I laughed.
"Your fellow voyagers will be people you know, or used to know—the majority of them," he returned; then, with what seemed to be a curious lack of enthusiasm, he enumerated them. "I've invited the newly married Greys; the Ph.D. Sanfords; Major Terwilliger and his nephew, Jerry Dupuyster; Conetta Kincaide and her dragoness aunt, Miss Mehitable; Madeleine Barclay and her father; young Grisdale and his bull pup; and Hobart Ingerson. And last, but by no means least, Mrs. Eager Van Tromp and her three daughters."
"Heavens!" I interjected. "Why didn't you include all of New York, while you were about it? Do you mean to tell me that you have all these people with you in the Andromeda?"
"Not yet, but soon," he qualified. "They are on the way down here in my private car. I'm here to meet them, and so, by the same token, are you."
"Good Lord! If you had hired a Hagenbeck to make your collection it couldn't have been more zoo-like! What under the sun were you thinking of, Teck?"
"They are all people I'd like to know better," he rejoined half absently. "The 'collection,' as you so scoffingly call it, was quite carefully chosen, if you did but know it."