THE CRUISE OF THE DREAM SHIP
On dreams, and the means to realize them
Chapter I headpiece
CHAPTER I
On dreams, and the means to realize them
We all have our dreams. Without them we should be clods. It is in our dreams that we accomplish the impossible; the rich man dumps his load of responsibility and lives in a log shack on a mountain top, the poor man becomes rich, the stay-at-home travels, the wanderer finds an abiding place.
For more years than I like to recall my dream has been to cruise through the South Sea Islands in my own ship, and if you had ever been to the South Sea Islands, it would be yours also. They are the sole remaining spot on this earth that is not infested with big-game-shooting expeditions, globe-trotters, or profiteers, where the inhabitants know how to live, and where the unfortunate from distant and turbulent lands can still find interest, enjoyment, and peace.
My dream was as impracticable as most. There was a war to be attended to and lived through if Providence so willed. There was a ship to be bought, fitted out, and provisioned on a bank balance that would fill the modern cat's-meat-man with contempt. There were the little matters of cramming into a chronically unmathematical head sufficient knowledge of navigation to steer such a ship across the world when she was bought, and of finding a crew that would work her without hope of monetary reward.
The thing looked and sounded sufficiently like comic opera to deter me from mentioning it to any but a select few, and they laughed. Yet such is the driving power of a dream if its fulfilment is sufficiently desired that I write in retrospect with my vision a secure and accomplished fact.