“The ruler of this golden valley was some sort of a princess, and she was downright niggardly with her money, as some of these heiresses are, you know.  She’d promise the King to bring him an apronful of gold if he’d give her a sacrifice to offer up, but he had no way of providing an offering.  No one had come for years in the line of a sacrifice, excepting ourselves.  You can imagine the awkwardness this created.  The King wanted to sacrifice us, one or both, directly.  The princess, who by the by was a regular ripper in her way, was quite gone on Sir Harry, and he on her as well.  At this point my own personal fortunes were much involved, as you may understand.

“Sir Harry explained that while he wished to be quite the gentleman about it, and accord me every courtesy, he’d be obliged if I’d be the sacrifice, and leave him to represent her Majesty in the new territory.  We talked it over a bit, but came to no conclusion about the matter.  It was at this time that one of the most remarkable portions of our experience occurred.

“One morning Sir Harry and I were standing in front of our residence, in our part of the island, talking over matters.  Sir Harry was taking a bawth in a wash-hand basin—­”

“What’s that?” asked Uncle Jim.

“I reckon he means a wash-pan,” explained Billy Hudgens.

“At least, Sir Harry was making a deuce of a row with the soap, and he’d the wash-hand basin quite full of bubbles.  Just then the King of Gee-Whiz came by, and chawnced to notice the bubbles.  You should have seen his expression!

“You must remember he’d never seen a bit of soap in all his life; and no one who has been without it—­like the King and myself—­can tell what that means.  He was deucedly infatuated with the bubbles.  In short, he valued them at once far more than all the gold in the valley; and he wound up by telling us flat, that so long as we could make bubbles for him, there would be no sacrifice.  He commanded us to appear before him every day and make these bubbles—­Sir Harry showed him how to do it with his pipe—­every morning and awfternoon.

“Awfter he’d gone, Sir Harry and I looked at each other.  ’It’s death or bubbles,’ said he to me.  I pointed out to him that it was either death or no bawth.  He was much shocked.  Evidently the thing could not go on, for our soap was already very near exhausted.  Sir Harry was a sad dog.  Said he to me, ‘While there is soap there is life,’ meaning to say, you see, that while there was life there was hope.  Ha, ha!”

“Leave that out,” admonished Curly.  “Go on.”

“About now there went ashore on the island the private yacht of a gentleman whom we found to be Sir Isaac Morgenstern.  He was a retired soap-maker, of wealth and station, and was on a voyage to Samoa with his daughter, his household servants, and the like.  He’d with him, as chaplain, a missionary, William Cook, a person of very fat habit of body.