Page:Rolf Boldrewood - A Modern Buccaneer.djvu/23

 I found myself at length on blue water, in a vessel which I might fairly describe as "our little craft," bound for foreign parts and strange cities. I speedily made the acquaintance of the crew—a strangely assembled lot, mostly shady as to character and reckless as to speech, but without exception true "sailor men." At that time of day, employment on the high seas was neither so easy to obtain nor so well paid as at present. The jolly tars of the period were therefore less independent and inclined to cavil at minor discomforts. Once shipped, they worked with a will, and but little fault could be found with their courage or seamanship.

Among other joys and delights which I promised myself, had been a closer acquaintance with the life and times of a picturesque and romantic personage, known and feared, if all tales were true, throughout the South Seas. This was the famous, the celebrated Captain Hayston, whose name was indeed a spell to conjure with from New Zealand to the Line Islands.

Much that could excite a boyish imagination had been related to me concerning him. One man professing an intimate knowledge had described him as "'a real pirate." Could higher praise be awarded? I put together all the tales I had heard about him—his great stature and vast strength, his reckless courage, his hair-breadth escapes, his wonderful brig,—cousin german, no doubt, to the "long low wicked-looking craft" in the pages of Tom Cringle's Log, and other veracious historiettes, "nourishing a youth sublime," in the long bright summer days of old; those days when we fished and bathed, ate oysters, and read alternately from early morn till the lighthouse on the South Head flashed out! My heroes had been difficult to find hitherto; they had mostly eluded my grasp. But this one was real and tangible. He would be fully up to description. His splendid scorn of law and order, mercy or