more and we should all be aboard, the hawsers would splash
in the water, the sails would fill and strain. From the deck I

should see the little walled town recede and sink and grow dim,
while every plunge of our bows brought us nearer to the happy

island--it was an island we were bound for, I knew well! Already
I could see the island-people waving hands on the crowded quay,

whence the little houses ran up the hill to the castle, crowning
all with its towers and battlements. Once more we should ride

together, a merry procession, clattering up the steep street and
through the grim gateway; and then we should have arrived, then

we should all dine together, then we should have reached home!
And then--

OW! OW! OW!
Bitter it is to stumble out of an opalescent dream into the cold

daylight; cruel to lose in a second a sea-voyage, an island, and
a castle that was to be practically your own; but cruellest

and bitterest of all to know, in addition to your loss, that the
fingers of an angry aunt have you tight by the scruff of your

neck. My beautiful book was gone too--ravished from my grasp by
the dressy lady, who joined in the outburst of denunciation as

heartily as if she had been a relative--and naught was left me
but to blubber dismally, awakened of a sudden to the harshness of

real things and the unnumbered hostilities of the actual world.
I cared little for their reproaches, their abuse; but I sorrowed

heartily for my lost ship, my vanished island, my uneaten dinner,
and for the knowledge that, if I wanted any angels to play with,

I must henceforth put up with the anaemic, night-gowned
nonentities that hovered over the bed of the Sunday-school child

in the pages of the Sabbath Improver.
I was led ignominiously out of the house, in a pulpy, watery

state, while the butler handled his swing doors with a
stony, impassive countenance, intended for the deception of the

very elect, though it did not deceive me. I knew well enough
that next time he was off duty, and strolled around our way, we

should meet in our kitchen as man to man, and I would punch him
and ask him riddles, and he would teach me tricks with corks and

bits of string. So his unsympathetic manner did not add to my
depression.

I maintained a diplomatic blubber long after we had been packed
into our pony-carriage and the lodge-gate had clicked behind us,

because it served as a sort of armour-plating against heckling
and argument and abuse, and I was thinking hard and wanted to be

let alone. And the thoughts that I was thinking were two.
First I thought, "I've got ahead of Charlotte THIS time!"

And next I thought, "When I've grown up big, and have money
of my own, and a full-sized walking-stick, I will set out early

one morning, and never stop till I get to that little walled
town." There ought to be no real difficulty in the task. It

only meant asking here and asking there, and people were very
obliging, and I could describe every stick and stone of it.

As for the island which I had never even seen, that was not so
easy. Yet I felt confident that somehow, at some time, sooner or

later, I was destined to arrive.
A SAGA OF THE SEAS

It happened one day that some ladies came to call, who were not
at all the sort I was used to. They suffered from a grievance,

so far as I could gather, and the burden of their plaint was
Man--Men in general and Man in particular. (Though the words

were but spoken, I could clearly discern the capital M in their
acid utterance.)

Of course I was not present officially, so to speak. Down below,
in my sub-world of chair-legs and hearthrugs and the undersides

of sofas, I was working out my own floor-problems, while they
babbled on far above my head, considering me as but a chair-leg,

or even something lower in the scale. Yet I was listening hard
all the time, with that respectfulconsideration one gives to

all grown-up people's remarks, so long as one knows no better.
It seemed a serious indictment enough, as they rolled it out. In

tact, considerateness, and right appreciation, as well as in
taste and aesthetic sensibilities--we failed at every point, we

breeched and bearded prentice-jobs of Nature; and I began to feel
like collapsing on the carpet from sheer spiritual anaemia. But

when one of them, with a swing of her skirt, prostrated a whole
regiment of my brave tin soldiers, and never apologized nor even

offered her aid toward revivifying the battle-line, I could not
help feeling that in tactfulness and consideration for others she

was still a little to seek. And I said as much, with some
directness of language.

That was the end of me, from a society point of view. Rudeness
to visitors was the unpardonable sin, and in two seconds I

had my marching orders, and was sullenly wending my way to the
St. Elelena of the nursery. As I climbed the stair, my thoughts

reverted somehow to a game we had been playing that very morning.
It was the good old game of Rafts,--a game that will be played

till all the oceans are dry and all the trees in the world are
felled--and after. And we were all crowded together on the

precarious little platform, and Selina occupied every bit as much
room as I did, and Charlotte's legs didn't dangle over any more

than Harold's. The pitiless sun overhead beat on us all with
tropic impartiality, and the hungry sharks, whose fins scored the

limitless Pacific stretching out on every side, were impelled by
an appetite that made no exceptions as to sex. When we shared

the ultimatebiscuit and circulated the last water-keg, the girls
got an absolute fourth apiece, and neither more nor less; and

the only partiality shown was entirely in favour of
Charlotte, who was allowed to perceive and to hail the saviour-

sail on the horizon. And this was only because it was her turn
to do so, not because she happened to be this or that. Surely,

the rules of the raft were the rules of life, and in what, then,
did these visitor-ladies' grievance consist?

Puzzled and a little sulky, I pushed open the door of the
deserted nursery, where the raft that had rocked beneath so many

hopes and fears still occupied the ocean-floor. To the dull eye,
that merely tarries upon the outsides of things, it might have

appeared unromantic and even unraftlike, consisting only as it
did of a round sponge-bath on a bald deal towel-horse placed flat

on the floor. Even to myself much of the recent raft-glamour
seemed to have departed as I half-mechanically stepped inside and

curled myself up in it for a solitaryvoyage. Once I was
in, however, the old magic and mystery returned in full flood,

when I discovered that the inequalities of the towel-horse caused
the bath to rock, slightly, indeed, but easily and incessantly.

A few minutes of this delightfulmotion, and one was fairly
launched. So those women below didn't want us? Well, there were

other women, and other places, that did. And this was going to
be no scrambling raft-affair, but a full-blooded voyage of the

Man, equipped and purposeful, in search of what was his rightful
own.

Whither should I shape my course, and what sort of vessel should
I charter for the voyage? The shipping of all England was mine

to pick from, and the far corners of the globe were my rightful
inheritance. A frigate, of course, seemed the natural vehicle

for a boy of spirit to set out in. And yet there was something
rather "uppish" in commanding a frigate at the very first

set-off, and little spread was left for the ambition. Frigates,
too, could always be acquired later by sheer adventure; and your

real hero generally saved up a square-rigged ship for the final
achievement and the rapt return. No, it was a schooner that I

was aboard of--a schooner whose masts raked devilishly as the
leaping seas hissed along her low black gunwale. Many

hairbrained youths started out on a mere cutter; but I was
prudent, and besides I had some inkling of the serious affairs

that were ahead.
I have said I was already on board; and, indeed, on this occasion