Captains of adventure - Roger Pocock

INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.

ADVENTURERS

What is an adventurer? One who has adventures? Surely not. A person charged by a wild rhinoceros is having an adventure, yet however wild the animal, however wild the person, he is only somebody wishing himself at home, not an adventurer. In dictionaries the adventurer is “one who seeks his fortune in new and hazardous or perilous enterprises.” But outside the pages of a dictionary, the man who seeks his fortune, who really cares for money and his own advantage, sits at some desk deriding the fools who take thousand-to-one chances in a gamble with Death. Did the patron saint of adventurers, Saint Paul, or did Saint Louis, or Francis Drake, or Livingstone, or Gordon seek their own fortune, think you? In real life the adventurer is one who seeks, not his fortune, but the new and hazardous or perilous enterprises. There are holy saints and scoundrels among adventurers, but all the thousands I have known were fools of the romantic temperament, dealing with life as an artist does with canvas, to color it with fierce and vivid feeling, deep shade and radiant light, exulting in the passions of the sea, the terrors of the wilderness, the splendors of sunshine and starlight, the exaltation of battle, fire and hurricane.

All nations have bred great adventurers, but the living nation remembers them sending the boys out into the world enriched with memories of valor, a heritage of national honor, an inspiration to ennoble their manhood. That is the only real wealth of men and of peoples. For such purposes this book is written, but so vast is the theme that this volume would outgrow all reasonable size unless we set some limit. A man in the regular standing forces of his native state is not dubbed adventurer. When, for example, the immortal heroes Tromp and De Ruyter fought the British generals at sea, Blake and Monk, they were no more adventurers than are the police constables who guard our homes at night. Were Clive and Warren Hastings adventurers? They would turn in their graves if one brought such a charge. The true type of adventurer is the lone-hand pioneer.

It is not from any bias of mine that the worthies of Switzerland, the Teutonic empires and Russia, are shut out of this poor little record; but because it seems that the lone-hand oversea and overland pioneers come mainly from nations directly fronting upon the open sea. As far as I am prejudiced, it is in favor of old Norway, whose heroes have entranced me with the sheer glory of their perfect manhood. For the rest, our own English-speaking folk are easier for us to understand than any foreigners.

As to the manner of record, we must follow the stream of history if we would shoot the rapids of adventure.

Now as to the point of view: My literary pretensions are small and humble, but I claim the right of an adventurer, trained in thirty-three trades of the Lost Region, to absolute freedom of speech concerning frontiersmen. Let history bow down before Columbus, but as a foremast seaman, I hold he was not fit to command a ship. Let history ignore Captain John Smith, but as an ex-trooper, I worship him for a leader, the paladin of Anglo-Saxon chivalry, and very father of the United States. Literature admires the well advertised Stanley, but we frontiersmen prefer Commander Cameron, who walked across Africa without blaming others for his own defects, or losing his temper, or shedding needless blood. All the celebrities may go hang, but when we take the field, send us leaders like Patrick Forbes, who conquered Rhodesia without journalists in attendance to write puffs, or any actual deluge of public gratitude.

The historic and literary points of view are widely different from that of our dusty rankers.