for instance, surely not in vain.

What you say of the two parts in KIDNAPPED was felt by no one more
painfully than by myself. I began it partly as a lark, partly as a
pot-boiler; and suddenly it moved, David and Alan stepped out from
the canvas, and I found I was in another world. But there was the
cursed beginning, and a cursed end must be appended; and our old
friend Byles the butcher was plainly audible tapping at the back
door. So it had to go into the world, one part (as it does seem to
me) alive, one part merely galvanised: no work, only an essay.
For a man of tentative method, and weak health, and a scarcity of
private means, and not too much of that frugality which is the
artist's proper virtue, the days of sinecures and patrons look very
golden: the days of professional literature very hard. Yet I do
not so far deceive myself as to think I should change my character
by changing my epoch; the sum of virtue in our books is in a
relation of equality to the sum of virtues in ourselves; and my
KIDNAPPED was doomed, while still in the womb and while I was yet
in the cradle, to be the thing it is.

And now to the more genial business of defence. You attack my
fight on board the COVENANT: I think it literal. David and Alan
had every advantage on their side - position, arms, training, a
good conscience; a handful of merchant sailors, not well led in the
first attack, not led at all in the second, could only by an
accident have taken the round-house by attack; and since the
defenders had firearms and food, it is even doubtful if they could
have been starved out. The only doubtful point with me is whether
the seamen would have ever ventured on the second onslaught; I half
believe they would not; still the illusion of numbers and the