“‘That iss for which we haf so-long-in-vain sought, Percy,’ he said to me in his quaint, link-chain style of speech.  ’A leedle prifate volcano-laboratory to ourselves to have.  Totally unknown:  undescribed, not-on-the-chart-to-be-found.  To-morrow we start.  I make a list of the things-to-get.’

“He began his list, as I remember, with three dozen undershirts, a gallon of pennyroyal for insect bites, a box of assorted fish hooks, thirty pounds of tea, and a case of carpet tacks.  When I hadn’t anything else to worry over, I used to lie awake at night and speculate on the purpose of those carpet tacks.  He had something in mind:  if there was anything on which he prided himself, it was his practical bent.  But the list never got any further:  it ceased short of one page in the ledger, as you may have noticed.  I outfitted by telegraph on the way across the continent.

“The doctor didn’t ask me whether I’d go.  He took it for granted.  That’s probably why I didn’t back out.  Nor did I tell him that the three life insurance companies which had foolishly and trustingly accepted me as a risk merely on the strength of a good constitution were making frantic efforts to compromise on the policies.  They felt hurt, those companies:  my healthy condition had ceased to appeal to them.  What’s a good constitution between earthquakes?  No, there was no use telling the doctor.  It would only have worried him.  Besides, I didn’t believe that the island was there.  I thought it was a myth of that stranded ancient mariner’s imagination.  When it rose to sight at the proper spot, none were more astounded than the bad risk who now addresses you.

“Yet, I must say for the island that it came handsomely up to specifications.  Down where you were, Slade. you didn’t get a real insight into its disposition.  But in back of us there was any kind of action for your money.  Geysers, hell-spouts, fuming fissures, cunning little craterlets with half-portions of molten lava ready to serve hot; more gases than you could create in all the world’s chemical laboratories:  in fact, everything to make the place a paradise for Old Nick—­and Dr. Schermerhorn.  He brought along in his precious chest, besides the radium, some sort of raw material:  also, as near as I could make out, a sort of cage or guardianship scheme for his concentrated essence of cussedness, when he should get it out of the volcano.

“In the first seven months he puttered around the little fumers, with an occasional excursion up to the main crater.  It was my duty to follow on and drag him away when he fell unconscious.  Sometimes I would try to get him before he was quite gone.  Then he would become indignant, and fight me.  Perhaps that helped to lose me his confidence.  More and more he withdrew into himself.  There were days when he spoke no word to me.  It was lonely.  Do you know why I used to visit you at the beach, Slade?  I suppose you thought I was keeping watch on you.  It wasn’t that, it was loneliness.  In a way, it hurt me, too:  for one couldn’t help but be fond of the old boy; and at times it seemed as if he weren’t quite himself.  Pardon me, if I may trouble you for the matches?  Thanks....