The way that takes them home.
I’ve clung on an old wind-jammer,
I’ve done things—best untold;
Hump’d the swag on many a rush,
Found everything—but gold!
But oh! for the flashlight homeward!
The anchor’s running chain,
And the sight of their dear old faces—
To see me home again!
Be assured that I have given no artificial colouring in my book, neither have I seriously set out to describe what I have seen, though I am confident that I must have succeeded in giving some local atmosphere, since all that I have written is drawn from true experience, but I cannot be certain that all the events followed exactly in the order that I have written them, for with the flight of time the dates of days, months and years fade away. I have left to silence almost one year of my South Sea Island life, especially of that period when I, with a kindred spirit of my own age, lived for several months in a hut of our own fashioning on the shore side near Pangopango harbour off the Isle of Tutuela; also I have passed over several months of my Australian bush experiences, and I have done this for reasons of my own. Later on I hope to record the experiences of my sea life that followed my twentieth birthday.