The three friends gazed at him for several seconds in astonishment; then they looked at each other for some solution to this mystery.
"What meaneth this ?" Drummond asked when he regained his voice.

"Surely I have heard that voice before.

It takes me back, back into the past, many years ago, when we were all young." Before any one could say a word, Sir Albert started up, laid aside his cocked hat and, brushing back his long snow-white hair from his massive brow, said: "Drummond, Lawrence, Cheeseman, friends of my youth, look on this face and, in God's name, tell me you recognize one familiar feature left by the hand of misfortune." The three looked,--started to their feet, and Drummond cried: "God in heaven! hath the sea given up its dead?
_It is John Stevens_!" "It is John Stevens, alive and in the flesh," he quickly answered.

At first they could hardly believe him, until he briefly told them the story of his shipwreck and wonderful adventures on the island, of the treasures untold thrown into his hands, and finally of a ship, in search of water, putting into his poor harbor.

After no little trouble he got his treasure aboard this vessel without the crew suspecting what it was and sailed to Europe.