Page:Rolf Boldrewood - A Modern Buccaneer.djvu/21

 have always been devoted, more particularly the privileged citizens of Sydney, I had always taken a leading part. More than once, in a hard-fought finish, had I been lifted out fainting or insensible.

My curling fair hair and blue eyes bore token of our Norse blood and Anglo-Norman descent. The family held a tradition that our surname came from Taillefer, the warrior minstrel who rode in the forefront of Duke William's army at Hastings. Strangely, too, a passionate love of song had always clung to the race. "Sir Hilary charged at Agincourt," as saith the ballad. Roving and adventure ran in the blood for generations uncounted.

For all that trouble arose when I announced my resolve. My schoolmates had settled down in the offices of merchants, bankers, and lawyers, why could not I do the same? My mother's tears fell fast as she tried in vain to dissuade me from my resolution. My father was neutral. He knew well the intensity of the feeling. "If born in a boy," he said, "as it was in me, it is his fate—nothing on earth can turn him from it; if you stop him you will make a bad landsman and spoil a good sailor. Let him go! he must take his chance like another man. God is above the wave as over the earth. If it be his fate, the perils of the deep will be no more than the breezes of the bay."

It was decided at length that I should be allowed to go on my way. To the islands of the South Pacific my heart pointed as truly as ever did compass needle to the North.

I had read every book that had ever been written about them, from Captain Cook's Voyages to The Mutiny of the Bounty. In my dreams how many times had I seen the purple mountains, the green glow of the fairy woodlands, had bathed in the crystal streams, and heard the endless surf music on the encircling reef, cheered the canoes loaded with fruit racing for their market in the crimson flush of the paradisal morn, or lingered amidst the Aidenns of the