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 serious now. "What do you suggest?"

"I can't say," Tempest replied with a light laugh, seeing how intent the boy had suddenly become. "Don't let this make an old man of you. We may be on a wild-goose chase all the time—but then again we might not. And what we 've got to do is to assume that it is n't a wild-goose chase. We 've got to try this thing out, somehow or other."

"Well, there's one thing," Dave commented. "One might go to sea for a hundred years and never get as near as three hundred miles to Lost Island again."

"That's just my point," said Tempest. "To tell you the truth, I can't see very far ahead at the moment. If we had a private yacht and plenty of money, the thing would be simplified; but we have n't too much money between us, and our yacht is now rotting at the bottom of the Pacific.