The islands were too small and too near for characters so widely different.

Hare had "oceans of money," and might have lived well in London; but he had been governor of a wild colony in Borneo, and could not confine himself to the tame life that prosy civilization affords.

And so he hung on to the atoll with his forty women, retreating little by little before Ross and his sturdy crew, till at last he found himself and his harem on the little island known to this day as Prison Island, where, like Bluebeard, he confined his wives in a castle.

The channel between the islands was narrow, the water was not deep, and the eight Scotch sailors wore long boots.

Hare was now dismayed.