He fingered the one and fivepence in his pocket; the sound of the rattling coppers fired his blood.
"And then I'd dash away on the horse's back, and I'd buy a ship, and I'd man it with a first-rate crew, and I'd sink it in the middle of the sea. And, first of all, I'd fill the long-boat with everything that I could want--guns, and pistols, and revolvers, and swords, and bullets, and powder, and cartridges and things--and I'd get into it alone, and I'd say farewell to the sinking ship and crew, and I'd row off to a desert island, and I'd stop there five-and-twenty years. Yes; and I'd tame all the birds and animals and things, and I'd be happy as a king. And then I'd come away."
He did not pause to consider how he was to come away; but that was a detail too trivial to deserve consideration. By this time Cobham was being left behind; but he saw nothing save the life which was to be after he had left that desert isle.
"I'd go to Sherwood Forest, and I'd live under the greenwood tree, and I'd form a band of robbers, and I'd have them dressed in green, and I'd seize the Archbishop of Canterbury, and I'd make him fight me with single-sticks, and I'd let the beggars go, and I'd give the poor all the booty that I got."
What the rest of the band would say to this generous distribution of their hard-earned gains was another detail which escaped consideration.
"And I'd be the oppressor of the rich and the champion of the poor, and I'd make everybody happy." How the rich were to be made happy by oppression it is difficult to see; but so few systems of philosophy bear a rigorous examination. "And I'd have peace and plenty through the land, and I'd have lots of fighting, and if there was anybody in prison I'd break the prisons open and I'd let the prisoners out, and I'd be Ruler of the Greenwood Tree."
His thoughts turned to Jack the Giant-Killer. By now the day was really breaking, and with the rising sun his spirits rose still higher. The moonlight merging into the sunshine filled the country with a rosy haze, which was just the kind of thing for magic.
"I wish there still were fairies."
If he only had had the eyes no fairyland would have been more beautiful than the world just then.
"No, I don't exactly wish that there were fairies--fairies are such stuff; but I wish that there were giants and all that kind of thing. And I wish that I had a magic sword, and a purse that was always more full the more you emptied it, and that I could walk ten thousand miles a day. I wish that you had only got to wish for a thing to get it--wouldn't I just start wishing! I don't know what I wouldn't wish for."