Here is a yarn which will appeal to everyone who possesses 'the adventure spirit.'

Foreword.

Compromise may annoy us; yet if there be any sense in things, then must compromise be our first concern, else surely any reasonable providence would long ago have either wiped out or cleared up this comic compromise on which men make their schemes and ships have their sailings.

Author's preamble.

Take a map of Europe, or the whole wide world, and put a finger on the land of your greatest imagined mystery.

Chapter I. To go to sea.