There are about one hundred pages missing from this book—pages that should have told of the inevitable details of stern existence: those things that all men who are vagabonds experience, such as the stomach-rumbles of hunger, monstrous hopes and misgivings, hospitals and illnesses, and cold nights sleeping out under the coco-palms and gum-trees when the wind suddenly shifts to a shivering quarter. Evil thoughts, heartaches, the tenderest wishes, passionate drums, longings, and memories in the night of a woman’s eyes, the fall before great temptation, atheistical thoughts, curses and religious remorses you will look for in vain. For, after all, I am not brave enough to tell the truth! I might have done so if I had had the friendly, courageous publisher who would not cut them out of the original manuscript. But where is the publisher who would let me hide behind his influential bulk as he risked all and published the truth? Yes, those things which would make the reader recognise the truth by his own responsive thrills.
Well, I will risk my reputation on the opinions of those critics who will be able to read the hundred pages I have left out. For real scallawags do not always leave the worst out only. Moreover, I may be lucky enough to find sympathy, for even critics are sometimes at heart genuine vagabonds, and they may realise that I have turned into the light of other days, the stars, the blue tropical skies, moonlit seas by coral reefs and palm-clad isles, and into the heart of intense dreams, to paint faithfully all that I tell.
Before my North American experiences, which I have recorded in the opening chapters of this book, I had shipped before the mast of a sailing ship, the S——p, at Sydney, N.S.W., intending to go with her round the Horn, and so home to England. But, being unable to tolerate the bullying chief mate and the offal-flavoured fo’c’sle food, I left the boat at ’Frisco and again shipped on an American tramp that was chartered for trading purposes to go cruising in the South Seas, where once more I had many ups and downs, and settled for a few months in the Fiji group and elsewhere. My reminiscences, and many of the incidents of that time, I have told in the second part of the present volume, which opens with “The Charity Organization of the South Seas.”
My South Sea Island legends and fairy tales have never been told elsewhere. I have written them as nearly as possible in the manner in which they were told me by the Samoan children and natives who were my friends. The mythology of the South Seas is unfortunately becoming almost completely forgotten by the natives, who now live under such different conditions, and seem only interested in the creeds, legends and mythology of the Western world.
These experiences of mine are written from memory, and I have as nearly as possible kept them in the order that I lived them; and if they seem far-flung for one as young as I was, let me assure you that hundreds of English boys have had my experiences and could tell this tale.
I am from a family of rovers. My uncles were travellers and explorers. My brothers out of the spirit of adventure all went to sea, and achieved success on sea and land through perseverance. My grandfather in his boyhood went to sea. (I believe he was born at sea. His mother was a lady of the Italian Court, noted for her beauty and an accomplished musician.) He was a direct descendant of Charles, the second Earl of Middleton, whose estates were eventually confiscated by creditors—an evil destiny that has survived right down to the present, it having cropped up in the author’s own affairs.
I hope to follow this volume with another one, wherein I shall tell of my life when I settled for a while among civilised peoples and became respectable, and my serious troubles commenced.
I have to thank Messrs Boosey & Company, of London, for permission to use certain extracts from my military band Entr’actes, Marches, etc., which they have published.
A. S.-M.