Page:Barbour--Lost island.djvu/239

 Dave nor Tempest could determine, and Jim certainly did not know. Probably he was in the neighborhood of forty. He was not particularly communicative, but piece by piece the other two extracted some of his history. His early boyhood had been spent in the Sandwich Islands; but being by nature a roamer, he left there and became stranded at Tahiti, far to the south of Honolulu. He did not remain there long, however, moving from one place to another, sometimes as a sailor, sometimes picking up a scant subsistence as a fisherman, and sometimes living a life which was more than half savage. His knowledge of the islands in the South Seas was extensive and peculiar; and like Tempest, he had the trick of making himself completely at home wherever fate happened to set him down.

"Have you ever been to Christmas Island?" Dave once asked him, wonderingly.

"Lived there two summers," Jim explained. "Nice place. Not many people."