"Why, that boyish adventure doesn't count," he said. "That wasn't
wildness. I haven't gone wild yet. But watch me when I start. Do you
know Kipling's 'Song of Diego Valdez'? Let me quote you a bit of it.
You see, Diego Valdez, like me, had good fortune. He rose so fast to
be High Admiral of Spain that he found no time to take the pleasure he
had merely tasted. He was lusty and husky, but he had no time, being
too busy rising. But always, he thought, he fooled himself with the
thought, that his lustiness and huskiness would last, and, after he
became High Admiral he could then have his pleasure. Always he
remembered:

"'--comrades--
Old playmates on new seas--
When as we traded orpiment
Among the savages--
A thousand leagues to south'ard
And thirty years removed--
They knew not noble Valdez,
But me they knew and loved.

"'Then they that found good liquor
They drank it not alone,
And they that found fair plunder,
They told us every one,
Behind our chosen islands
Or secret shoals between,
When, walty from far voyage,
We gathered to careen.

"'There burned our breaming-fagots,