The Captain’s little eyes looked quite mild and affectionate, but they also held their tiny glint of fire. He gazed at Ferdinand King in an unwavering, disconcerting way, tapping with his pencil upon the wooden shelf he had pulled out of the desk to form an improvised table between them, and uttering an occasional dreamy “H’m?” But in a moment or so the pencil was laid aside, and he began speaking, his chin nestled cosily in his hands.  
“King,” he said, “did you ever hear of Hagen’s Island?”
 
The other man shook his head, but seemed at the same time to recognize the curious little prelude about maps as hinging here. He waited almost breathlessly.
 
“Hagen’s Island,” resumed the Captain, “had governments quarreling over it in its time. I don’t doubt but it might once have been quite capable of bringing on a war somewhere. Oh, heaven! the laughter behind it all—behind all life, for that matter, King! H’m?—h’m? I spent a whole dreamy spring afternoon once, with crocuses just blooming outside, going through speeches about far off Hagen’s Island delivered in Parliament. That was in connection with the coaling station project which got under way and then was abandoned, with engineers right on the spot. Maybe it was all politics—I don’t know.” He shrugged.
 
“The island proved to be too remote. In short, it was a failure. Some newspaper wag dubbed it ‘the football of the Indian Ocean,’ and then the last ripple died out.” He seemed to lose himself a moment, as in a fog at sea; and King, mystified but much interested, waited for him to go on. The narrative was characteristically resumed from a rather startlingly new angle.
 
“Once upon a time there was a Dutchman—long before[40] the coaling station. His name was Vander Hagen, and his mania was to start an ideal commonwealth. Every generation somebody or other tries it. Isn’t it funny? Vander Hagen had passionate ideas about representation and individual rights. There seems to have been a lot about the Greeks in his plan. Well,” the Captain shrugged, “he died of a broken dream, and was bur............