“I can’t bear to read about it any more,” he returned, musingly.  “In fact, I’ve only been able to catch rumors of the progress of the war in the various ports at which I’ve touched, and I came right here from my ship.  But I’ve no sympathy with either side.  The whole thing annoys me, somehow—­the utter uselessness and folly of it all.”

“Maubeuge has fallen,” said Beth, and went on to give him the latest tidings.  Finding that the war was the absorbing topic in this little household, the boy developed new interest in it and the morning passed quickly away.

Jones stayed to lunch and then Mr. Merrick’s automobile took them all to the river to visit the beautiful yacht Arabella, which was already, they found, attracting a good deal of attention in the harbor, where beautiful yachts are no rarity.

The Arabella was intended by her builders for deep sea transit and as Patsy admiringly declared, “looked like a baby liner.”  While she was yacht-built in all her lines and fittings, she was far from being merely a pleasure craft, but had been designed by the elder Jones, the boy’s father, to afford communication between the Island of Sangoa, in the lower South Seas, and the continent of America.

Sangoa is noted for its remarkable pearl fisheries, which were now owned and controlled entirely by this youth; but his father, an experienced man of affairs, had so thoroughly established the business of production and sale that little remained for his only son and heir to do, more than to invest the profits that steadily accrued and to care for the great fortune left him.  Whether he was doing this wisely or not no one—­not even his closest friends—­could tell.  But he was frank and friendly about everything else.

They went aboard the Arabella and were received by that grim and grizzled old salt, Captain Carg, with the same wooden indifference he always exhibited.  But Patsy detected a slight twinkle in the shrewd gray eyes that made her feel they were welcome.  Carg, a seaman of vast experience, was wholly devoted to his young master.  Indeed, the girls suspected that young Jones was a veritable autocrat in his island, as well as aboard his ship.  Everyone of the Sangoans seemed to accept his dictation, however imperative it might be, as a matter of course, and the gray old captain—­who had seen much of the world—­was not the least subservient to his young master.

On the other hand, Jones was a gentle and considerate autocrat, unconsciously imitating his lately deceased father in his kindly interest in the welfare of all his dependents.  These had formerly been free-born Americans, for when the Island of Sangoa was purchased it had no inhabitants.