our hands, we two youngsters would sit for hours, with our eyes fixed
upon the old adventurer, drinking in his words, while he, pleased at the
interest which he excited, would puff slowly at his pipe and reel off
story after story of what he had seen or done. In those days, my dears,
there was no Defoe to tell us the wonders of the world, no _Spectator_
to lie upon our breakfast table, no Gulliver to satisfy our love of
adventure by telling us of such adventures as never were. Not once in a
month did a common newsletter fall into our hands. Personal hazards,
therefore, were of more value then than they are now, and the talk of a
man like old Solomon was a library in itself. To us it was all real.
His husky tones and ill-chosen words were as the voice of an angel, and
our eager minds filled in the details and supplied all that was wanting
in his narratives. In one evening we have engaged a Sallee rover off
the Pillars of Hercules; we have coasted down the shores of the African
continent, and seen the great breakers of the Spanish Main foaming upon
the yellow sand; we have passed the black ivory merchants with their
human cargoes; we have faced the terrible storms which blow ever around
the Cape de Boa Esperanza; and finally, we have sailed away out over the
great ocean beyond, amid the palm-clad coral islands, with the knowledge
that the realms of Prester John lie somewhere behind the golden haze
which shimmers upon the horizon. After such a flight as that we would
feel, as we came back to the Hampshire village and the dull realities of
country life, like wild birds who had been snared by the fowler and
clapped into narrow cages. Then it was that the words of my father,
'You will find your wings some day and fly away,' would come back to me,
and set up such a restlessness as all the wise words of Zachary Palmer
could not allay.


Chapter IV.