* * * * *

When I walked down the streets of Haberford once more, though I was leathery and stronger-looking, my adventures had added no meat to my bones.  I was amused at myself as I walked along more than usually erect, for no other reason than to keep my coat-tail well down in back in order not to show the hole in the seat of my trousers.  As I came down the street on which my father and I had lived, an anticipatory pleasure of being recognised as a sort of returned Odysseus beat through my veins like a drum.  But no one saw me who knew me.  It hurt me to come home, unheralded.

I came to the house where I had dwelt.  I pulled the bell.  There was no answer.  I walked around the corner to the telegraph office.  I was overjoyed to see lean, lanky Phil, the telegraph operator, half sleeping, as usual, over the key of his instrument.

“Hel-lo, John Gregory!” he shouted, with glad surprise in his voice.

* * * * *

He telephoned my father ... who came over from the works, running with gladness.  I was immediately taken home.  I took three baths that afternoon before I felt civilised again....

* * * * *

My father had returned to the Composite Works.  I was alone in my little room, with all my cherished books once more.  They had been, I could plainly observe, kept orderly and free of dust, against cay home-coming.  I took down my favourite books, kissing each one of them like a sweetheart.  Then I read here and there in all of them, observing all the old passages I had marked.  I lay in all attitudes.  Sprawling on the floor on my back, on my belly ... on my side ... now with my knees crossed....

Whitman, Shakespeare, Scott, Shelley, Byron ...  Speke, Burton, Stanley ... my real comrades!... my real world!  Rather a world of books than a world of actuality!...

I was so glad to be among my books again that for a month I gave no thought to the future.  I did nothing but read and study ... except at those times when I was talking to people prodigiously of my trip and what I had seen and been through.  And naturally and deftly I wove huge strips of imagination and sheer invention into the woof of every tale or anecdote....

I captained ships, saw Chinese slaughtered by the thousands, fought bandits on the outskirts of Manila, helped loot the palace of the empress in the Sacred City at Pekin ... tales of peril and adventure that I had heard others relate at camp-fires, in jail, in the forecastle, on the transport, I unhesitatingly appropriated as my own experiences.

All the papers printed stories about me.  And I was proud about it.  And I became prouder still when I sold a story in two parts to a New York Sunday paper ...  I liked the notoriety....