One thing I am sure: it was before I had ever seen an island worthy of the name that I must date my loyalty to the South Seas.

The blank sea itself grew desirable under such skies; and wherever the trade-wind blows, I know no better country than a schooner's deck.
But for the tugging anxiety as to the journey's end, the journey itself must thus have counted for the best of holidays.

My physical well-being was over-proof; effects of sea and sky kept me for ever busy with my pencil; and I had no lack of intellectual exercise of a different order in the study of my inconsistent friend, the captain.

I call him friend, here on the threshold; but that is to look well ahead.

At first, I was too much horrified by what I considered his barbarities, too much puzzled by his shifting humours, and too frequently annoyed by his small vanities, to regard him otherwise than as the cross of my existence.