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Dream Days by Kenneth Grahame
page 80 of 138 (57%)
view (they were the REAL South Sea Islands, of course--not the
badly furnished journeymen-islands that are to be perceived on
the map). As for the pirate brigantine and the man-of-war, I
don't really know what became of them. They had played their
part very well, for the time, but I wasn't going to bother to
account for them, so I just let them evaporate quietly. The
islands provided plenty of fresh occupation. For here were
little bays of silvery sand, dotted with land-crabs; groves
of palm-trees wherein monkeys frisked and pelted each other with
cocoanuts; and caves, and sites for stockades, and hidden
treasures significantly indicated by skulls, in riotous plenty;
while birds and beasts of every colour and all latitudes made
pleasing noises which excited the sporting instinct.

The islands lay conveniently close together, which necessitated
careful steering as we threaded the devious and intricate
channels that separated them. Of course no one else could be
trusted at the wheel, so it is not surprising that for some time
I quite forgot that there was such a thing as a Princess on
board. This is too much the masculine way, whenever there's any
real business doing. However, I remembered her as soon as the
anchor was dropped, and I went below and consoled her, and we had
breakfast together, and she was allowed to "pour out," which
quite made up for everything. When breakfast was over we ordered
out the captain's gig, and rowed all about the islands, and
paddled, and explored, and hunted bisons and beetles and
butterflies, and found everything we wanted. And I gave her pink
shells and tortoises and great milky pearls and little green
lizards; and she gave me guinea-pigs, and coral to make into
waistcoat-buttons, and tame sea-otters, and a real pirate's
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