Isle O’ Dreams

Robert Trask, an American mine scout, comes ashore at Manila on a month’s leave, hoping to see Marjorie Locke, the girl he has quietly been in love with since a steamer crossing. What he finds instead is Captain Dinshaw, a half-cracked old shipmaster living on charity, who lost his ship on an island off Luzon and now paints pictures of it to sell to hotel tourists, swearing the sand there is gold. The waterfront calls him a liar. Trask puts up the money anyway, and the Lockes charter a wrecker’s schooner for the run north with Dinshaw aboard. What follows is less a treasure hunt than a slow reckoning with the men hired to sail them: a captain who talks too freely and a mate nobody trusts. Salty, brisk, unpretentious adventure.