Listen, my Grandchildren! for you are mine, not indeed by the ridiculous
accident of birth (since to speak the truth I am an unmarried old
sea-dog), but by the far higher and more honourable title of having been
selected by me to hear this yarn. You know well enough that such a tale
_must_ be told to grandchildren, and since you undoubtedly possessed
grandparents, and have been hired at a shilling an hour to listen to me, I
have every right to address you as I did. Therefore I say, my
grandchildren, attend to what I am about to relate. You who live under the
beneficent sway of the mighty Australo-Canado-Africo-Celto-Americo-Anglian
Federation of Commonwealths, can have no notion of the degraded conditions
under which I, your grandfather, and the rest of my miserable
fellow-countrymen lived fifty years ago in the year 1892. Naturally you
have read no books of history referring to any date anterior to 1902. The
wretched records of ignorance, slavery and decrepitude have been justly
expunged from your curriculum. Let me tell you then that a little country
calling itself the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland at that time
arrogated to itself the leadership of the mighty countries which you now
call your home. You smile and refer me to a large-sized map on which, as
you justly observe, this country occupies a space of not more than two
square inches. Your surprise is intelligible, but the melancholy fact
remains. All this has now been happily changed, and changed too in
consequence of a war in which England (for so the country was often
inaccurately called, except upon Scotch political platforms, where people
naturally objected to the name) in which, as I say, England bore the chief
part and obtained the decisive victory. The story of this war I am now
about to relate to you.

CHAPTER II.