Just set foot on the journey

Of corse even a kid can get a good idea sometimes, and Maine, who I was fagging for, said afterwards that the idea was alright. Whether young Bailey or me thort of it first I don’t know, but Maine lent me a book about coarseers and buckeneers and such like people, and he said it was a great life, though not much followed in present times. He was no good for a coarseer himself, becorse the sea always made him dredfully bad, and, besides, he was going to be a bushranger some day, being an Australian and well up in it. But he said that Drake and Raleigh and many other men in our English history were buckeneers of the dedliest sort and had made England what it was; so me and Bailey thort a lot about it and wished a good deal we could begin that sort of life. Bailey said that in the books he’d 227read, if a boy began young, he was generally a super cargo and went on getting grater and grater slowly; but I thort boys began as cabin-boys and got grater very quickly by resquing people. But Bailey said that was only in books, and that nobody got on quickly at sea owing to the compettitishun. He did not much think there were any buckeneers left, but Maine said there were, cheefly off the coast of Africa, and that daring and dedly deeds were done in the Mediterranan to this day. He said the lawlessness there was awful, and that nobodi knew what went on along the north side of Africa in little bays and inletts there not marked on maps.

When Bailey herd that, he took more interest in it and wished he had been born the son of a pirit insted of a doctor, because he said we should have come eesily to it if our fathers had been in that corse of life; but when I told Maine, he sed that the best and most splendid pirits had had to overcome grate dificultees in their youth, and that it was the pirit who began as a meer boy at school who often made the gratest name.

Bailey sed he was a pirit at heart, and I 228sed I was to; but not untell we red a butiful book by Stevenson could we see any way to be one reelly. Then we saw that we must go away from Merivale in secret--in fact, we must fly; and Bailey sed it would have to be by night to avoid capture, and Maine sed it was so. But it was a tremendous thing to do, and I asked Bailey about his mother, and Bailey sed his mother would blub a good deal at first, but she would live to be proud of him when his name was wringing through England. And I felt the same in a way, becorse, though I have got no mother to blub, I have got an uncle, who is my gardian, and he is a lawer and a Conservitive who has tried to get into Parleyment and failed.