“A hundred!” gasped the boy.
The Captain nodded gravely. “Them Pirate Key folks lives a long time. They don’t go to school until they’re twenty. If they did, you see, they’d forget all they’d learned afore they was what you might call middle-aged.”
Billy pondered that. Not going to school until one was twenty had things to be said in its favor. Still, it was revolutionary, and he decided to put it aside for further consideration.
“And how was the Queen? And the Prince?” he asked interestedly.
“Well, the Queen was well, but the Prince had been an’ ate something as didn’t agree with him. The Royal Physician was some worried when I got there, but I give him a couple o’ doses of kerosine oil an’ it did him a power o’ good.”
“The—the physician?” asked Billy doubtfully.
“No, the Prince, o’ course. There wasn’t nothing the matter with the physician.” The Captain sounded slightly vexed. “He’d been an’ ate some—some—what’s this now?—some hoki-moki fruit.” He viewed Billy sternly. “The Prince had.”
“Really?” asked Billy. “What—what is hoki-moki fruit like?”
“Well,” replied the narrator, knocking the ashes from his pipe and thoughtfully scraping the bowl with his pocket knife, “it’s a sort o’ like a orange an’ sort o’ like a apple.”