boyish edification spinning yarns of adventure
in far-distant seas and on islands with magic names--Tawi Tawi,
Makassar Straits, the Dingdings, the Little Paternosters, the Gulf of
Boni, Thursday Island, Java Head. Of cannibal feasts in New Guinea, of
head-hunters in Borneo, of strange dances by dusky temple-girls in
Bali, of up-country expeditions with the White Rajah of Sarawak, of
desperate encounters with Dyak pirates in the Sulu Sea, he discoursed
at length and in fascinating detail, while I, sprawled on the verandah
steps, my knees clasped in my hands, listened raptly and, when the
veteran's flow of reminiscence showed signs of slackening, clamored
insistently for more.

Then and there I determined that some day I would myself sail those
adventurous seas in a vessel of my own, that I would poke the nose of
my craft up steaming tropic rivers, that I would drop anchor off towns
whose names could not be found on ordinary maps, and that I would go
ashore in white linen and pipe-clayed shoes and a sun-hat to take
tiffin with sultans and rajahs, and to barter beads and brass wire for
curios--a curly-bladed Malay kris, carved cocoanuts, a shark's-tooth
necklace, a blow-gun with its poisoned darts, a stuffed bird of
paradise, and, of course, a huge conch-shell and an enormous piece of
branch-coral--which I would bring home and display to admiring
relatives and friends as convincing proofs of where I had been.

But school and college had to be gotten through with, and after them
came wars in various parts of the world and adventurings in many
lands, so that thirty years slipped by before an opportunity presented
itself to realize the dream of my boyhood. But when at last I set sail
for those far-distant seas it was on an enterprise which would have
gladdened the old sailor's soul--an expedition whose object it was to
seek out the unusual, the curious, and the picturesque, and to capture
them on the ten miles of celluloid film which we took with us, so that
those who are condemned by circumstance to the humdrum life of the
farm, the office, or the mill might themselves go adventuring o'nights,
from the safety and comfort of red-plush seats, through the magic of
the motion-picture screen. When I set out on my long journey the old
whaling captain whose tales had kindled my youthful imagination had
been sleeping for a quarter of a century in the Mattapoisett graveyard,
but when our anchor rumbled down off Tawi Tawi, when, st