his son a pirate--until now!
It made me oddly happy.

I ought to have been happy here all these years, able to do precisely
what I liked; but sometimes I felt myself strangely alone in the
world. I was always silent and apparently cold--though really, let me
whisper--only shy. Sometimes, even here, I found myself a trifle sad.
It is difficult to be a boy when one starts at thirty; especially
difficult if one has always been rather old and staid.

I tell all these things to explain that keen pleasure, that swift
exultation, that rush of the blood to my cheeks, which I felt when I
saw that my house and my way of life met the approval of real boys.
Pirates, too!

Swift, therefore, fell once more the magic curtain of romance. I heard
a strange voice, my own voice, saying: "Enter then, my bold mates, and
let us explore this castle which we have conquered." Yes, illusion
floated in through the windows on the pale light of the evening. This
was a castle we had taken; and the detail that I chanced to own it was
neither here nor there.

"Prisoner," began L'Olonnois sternly--he was usually spokesman, if not
always leader--"Prisoner, your life is spared for the time. Lead on!
Attempt to play us false, and your blood shall be spilled upon the
deck!"

"It shall be so," I answered. "And if I do not give you the best meal
you have had to-day, then indeed let my life's blood stain the deck."

So saying, I nodded to Hiroshimi to serve the dinner.

CHAPTER IV

IN WHICH I AM A PIRATE

With my own hands I have trained that prize, Hiroshimi, to cook and to
serve; but only Providence could give Hiroshimi his super-humanly
disinterested calm. He fitted perfectly into the picture of our dream.
'Twas no ordinary log house in which we sat, indeed no house at all.
Beneath us rose and fell a stanch vessel, responsive to the long lift
of the southern seas. It was not a rustle of the leaves we heard
through the open windows, but the low ripple of waves along our
strakes came to our ears through the open ports. Hiroshimi did not
depart to the kitchen; but high aloft our lookout swept the sea for
sail that might offer us a prize.

If any say that this manner of illusion may not exist between two boys
and a man, I answer that we did not thus classify it. By the new
pleasure in my soul, by the new blood in my cheek, I swear we were
three boys together, and all in quest of adventure.

True, at times our speech smacked less of nauti