ADVENTURE


"We are those fools who could not rest
In the dull earth we left behind,
But burned with passion for the West,
And drank strange frenzy from its wind.
The world where wise men live at ease
Fades from our unregretful eyes,
And blind across uncharted seas
We stagger on our enterprise."

"THE SHIP OF FOOLS."




CHAPTER I--SOMETHING TO BE DONE


He was a very sick white man. He rode pick-a-back on a woolly-headed,
black-skinned savage, the lobes of whose ears had been pierced and
stretched until one had torn out, while the other carried a circular
block of carved wood three inches in diameter. The torn ear had been
pierced again, but this time not so ambitiously, for the hole
accommodated no more than a short clay pipe. The man-horse was greasy
and dirty, and naked save for an exceedingly narrow and dirty loin-cloth;
but the white man clung to him closely and desperately. At times, from
weakness, his head drooped and rested on the woolly pate. At other times
he lifted his head and stared with swimming eyes at the cocoanut palms