John nodded.  He liked geography, and stood at the head of his class.  “Part of the West Indies,” he said, rapidly.  “Low, coral islands.  One of them, San Salvador, is said to be the first land discovered by Columbus in 1492.  Principal exports, sugar, coffee, cotton, tobacco, and tropical fruits.  Belong to Great Britain.  That’s all I know.”

“Caramba!” said a handsome youth, who was lounging on the rail a few feet off, gazing on with idle eyes, “you got the schoolmaster here, Patron!  I did not know all that, me, and I come, too, from Bahamas.  Say, you teach a school, M’sieur?”

“Franci!” said the Patron, gravely.

“Si, Senor!” said Franci, with a beautiful smile, which showed his teeth under his black mustache.

“There is a school of flying-fish in the cabin.  Better see to them!”

“Si, Senor!” said Franci, and disappeared down the hatchway.

“Is there?” asked the boy John, with great eyes of wonder.  The Skipper smiled, and shook his head.

“Franci understands me,” he said.  “I wish to tell him that he go about his business, and not linger,—­as you say, loaf about the deck.  I take a little way round about, but he understands very well, Franci.  And of all these exports, what does the young gentleman think I have brought from the Bahamas?”

“I—­I was just wondering!” John confessed; but he did not add his secret hope that it was something more interesting than cotton or tobacco.

The Skipper turned and made a quick, graceful gesture with his hand.  “Perhaps the young gentleman like to see my cargo,” he said.  “Do me the favor!” and he led the way down to the cabin.

Now it became evident to the boy that all had indeed been a dream.  It sometimes happened that way, dreaming that you woke and found it all true, and then starting up to find that the first waking had been of dream-stuff too, that it was melting away from your sight, from your grasp; even things that looked so real, so real,—­he pinched himself violently, and shook his head, and tried to break loose from fetters of sleep, binding him to such sweet wonders, that he must lose next moment; but no waking came, and the wonders remained.

The cabin was full of shells.  Across one end of the little room ran a glazed counter, where lay heaped together various objects of jewelry, shell necklaces, alligator teeth and sea-beans set in various ways, tortoise-shell combs, bracelets and hairpins,—­a dazzling array.  Yet the boy’s eyes passed almost carelessly over these treasures, to light with quick enchantment on the shells themselves, the real shells, as he instantly named them to himself, resenting half-consciously the turning of Nature’s wonders into objects of vulgar adornment.