ook. In those waters, at
that time, the keels of ships were rare. I might well have lived out my
days there, in peace and fatness, under the sun where frost was not, had
it not been for the _Sparwehr_. The _Sparwehr_ was a Dutch merchantman
daring the uncharted seas for Indies beyond the Indies. And she found me
instead, and I was all she found.

Have I not said that I was a gay-hearted, golden, bearded giant of an
irresponsible boy that had never grown up? With scarce a pang, when the
_Sparwehrs_' water-casks were filled, I left Raa Kook and his pleasant
land, left Lei-Lei and all her flower-garlanded sisters, and with
laughter on my lips and familiar ship-smells sweet in my nostrils, sailed
away, sea-cuny once more, under Captain Johannes Maartens.

A marvellous wandering, that which followed on the old _Sparwehr_. We
were in quest of new lands of silk and spices. In truth, we found
fevers, violent deaths, pestilential paradises where death and beauty
kept charnel-house together. That old Johannes Maartens, with no hint of
romance in that stolid face and grizzly square head of his, sought the
islands of Solomon, the mines of Golconda--ay, he sought old lost
Atlantis which he hoped to find still afloat unscuppered. And he found
head-hunting, tree-dwelling anthropophagi instead.

We landed on strange islands, sea-pounded on their shores and smoking at
their summits, where kinky-haired little animal-men made monkey-wailings
in the jungle, planted their forest run-ways with thorns and stake-pits,
and blew poisoned splinters into us from out the twilight jungle bush.
And whatsoever man of us was wasp-stung by such a splinter died horribly
and howling. And we encountered other men, fiercer, bigger, who faced us
on the beaches in open fight, showering us with spears and arrows, while
the great tree drums and the little tom-toms rumbled and rattled war
across the tree-filled hollows, and all the hills were pillared with
signal-smokes.

Hendrik Hamel was supercargo and part owner of the _Sparwehr_ adventure,
and what he did not own was the property of Captain Johannes Maartens.
The latter spoke little English, Hendrik Hamel but little more. The
sailors, with whom I gathered, spoke Dutch only. But trust a sea-cuny to
learn Dutch--ay, and Korean, as you shall see.

Toward the end we came to the charted country of Japan. But the people
would have no dealings with us, and two sworded officials, in sweeping
robes