e. Later editions have been allowed to appear with
all the inaccuracies and crudities of the first. On page 116, Bombay is
still situated in the Bay of Bengal, and may continue to adorn that
shore. The error must be amusing, since unknown friends continue to
write and confess themselves tickled by it; and it is stupid to begin
amending a book in which you have lost interest. But though this is my
attitude towards 'Dead Man's Rock,' I can still look back on the writing
of it as on an amusing adventure.

[Illustration: 'Q.' JUNIOR]

It was begun in the late summer of 1886, and was my first attempt at
telling a story on paper. I am careful to say 'on paper,' because in
childhood I was telling myself stories from morning to night. Tens of
thousands of small boys are doing the same every day in the year; but I
should be sorry to guess how much of my time, between the ages of seven
and thirteen, must have been given up to weaving these childish epics.
They were curious jumbles; the characters (of which I had a constant
set) being drawn indiscriminately from the 'Morte d'Arthur,' 'Bunyan's
Holy War,' 'Pope's Iliad,' 'Ivanhoe,' and a book of Fairy Tales by Holme
Lee, as well as from history; and the themes ranging from battles and
tournaments to cricket, wrestling, and sailing matches. Anachronisms
never troubled the story-teller. The Duke of Wellington would cheerfully
break a lance with Captain Credence or Tristram of Lyonesse, and I
rarely made up a football fifteen without including Hardicanute (whom I
loved for his name), Hector (dear for his own sake) and Wamba (who
supplied the comic interest and scored off Thersites). They were brave
companions; but at the age of thirteen they deserted me suddenly. Or
perhaps after reading Mr. Stevenson's 'Chapter on Dreams,' I had better
say it was the Piskies--the Small People--who deserted me. They alone
know why--for their pensioner had never betrayed a single one of their
secrets--or why in these later times, when he sells their confidences
for money, they have come back to help him, though more sparingly. Three
or four of the little stories in 'Noughts and Crosses' are but
translated dreams, and there are others in my notebook; but now I never
compose without some pain, whereas in the old days I had but to sit
alone in a corner or take a solitary walk and invite them, and they did
all the work. But one summer evening I summoned them and met with no
response. Without warning the t