Chapter Twenty Three.
The Pitcairners have a Night of it.
Although John Adams had often, in the course of his residence on Pitcairn, jested and chatted and taken his share in relating many an anecdote, he had never up till that time resolved to “go in,” as he said, “for a regular story, like a book.”
“Women an’ child’n,” he began, “it may be that I’m goin’ to attempt more than I’m fit to carry out in this business, for my memory’s none o’ the best. However, that won’t matter much, for I tell ’ee, fair an’ aboveboard at the beginnin’, that when I come to gaps that I can’t fill up from memory, I’ll just bridge ’em over from imagination, d’ye see?”
“What’s imagination?” demanded Dan McCoy, whose tendency to pert interruption and reply nothing yet discovered could restrain.
“It’s a puzzler,” said Otaheitan Sally, in a low tone, which called forth a laugh from the others.
It did not take much to make these people laugh, as the observant reader will have perceived.
“Well, it is a puzzler,” said Adams, with a quiet smile and a perplexed look. “I may say, Dan McCoy, in an off-hand rough-an’-ready sort o’ way, that imagination is that power o’ the mind which enables a man to tell lies.”
There was a general opening of juvenile eyes at this, as if recent biblical instruction had led them to believe that the use of such a power must be naughty.