What I want to know now is where to find that island. I believe that it is somewheres, inside of a thousand miles north of Australia, but that isn’t enough to help anybody to find it. You might as well try to find a Mr. Smith by just knowing that he lived within a thousand miles more or less north of Mexico. If Mr. Monroe and I could find that island, we could sell it for a lot of money, and be rich all the rest of our days. But nobody will ever find it till somebody is shipwrecked on it again, and most likely when anybody is shipwrecked on it he will have to stay there.
Mr. Monroe and I often talked about the picnickers, and we finally agreed that they couldn’t have been a Sunday-school, but that they must have been on a yachting cruise, and accidentally discovered the island. But they certainly acted as if they had been there before; and then how can you account for the footprint and the hair-pin unless they had been there before? And if women and men came twice to the same island just to cook dinner there and then sail away again, they must have come from some place within a day’s sail. Then there were the goats. They would hardly have been as tame as they were unless they had been used to seeing people.
But it doesn’t do any good to cry over lost islands. The island is lost, and I never expect to find it. After all, I don’t care very much about having lost it, for Mr. Monroe has got me a first-rate place on a farm, and I needn’t ever go to sea any more. He is the best man that ever lived, and I would stick by him even if he were to turn into Mr. Crusoe again.
THE END.
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