"We are going now, aren't we, 'Fessor Pete?" said Pansy, who was sitting on his knee.
"Yes, my dear, yes. It is no use staying here when we have no steam, so the ship is now making for England's sunny shores. And we'll get there in the rosy month of June. Won't it be nice?"
Pansy was jumping with joy.
Aralia clapped her hands and cried: "Just too jolly for anything!"
By and by Aralia sat down to the piano, and Pete brought out his fiddle, and a very happy evening indeed was spent in the Valhalla.
The men were keeping it up forward too, around the galley fire, singing songs and spinning yarns, for the ship was "homeward bound".
"Oh, by the by," said Tom one day to the professor, "I forgot to tell you that in the cave where poor Veevee got lost I picked up this curious stone!"
The professor put his spectacles on his nose and gazed at it for a moment.
"Why, my dear Tom, this is solid gold, in the centre of a coating of quartz! You're in luck, lad; and it is just as I said; that is the Island of Gold. We shall return another year, and you will be one of the richest men in the kingdom."