showed themselves. There were no frowning rocks to depress the
children's fancy, but everywhere along the ridge pure white quartz
bared itself through the red earth like smiling teeth, the very
pebbles they played with were streaked with shining mica like bits
of looking-glass. The distance was always green and summer-like, but
the colour they most loved, and which was most familiar to them, was
the dark red of the ground beneath their feet everywhere. It showed
itself in the roadside bushes; its red dust pervaded the leaves of
the overhanging laurel, it coloured their shoes and pinafores; I am
afraid it was often seen in Indian like patches on their faces and
hands. That it may have often given a sanguinary tone to their
fancies, I have every reason to believe.

[Illustration]

It was on this ridge that the three children gathered at ten o'clock
that morning. An earlier flight had been impossible on account of
Wan Lee being obliged to perform his regular duty of blacking the
shoes of Polly and Hickory before breakfast,--a menial act which in
the pure Republic of childhood was never thought inconsistent with
the loftiest piratical ambition. On the ridge they met one "Patsey,"
the son of a neighbour, sun burned, broad-brimmed hatted, red
handed, like themselves. As there were afterwards some doubts
expressed whether he joined the Pirates of his own free will, or
was captured by them, I endeavour to give the colloquy exactly as it
occurred:--

_Patsey._ "Hallo, fellers."

_The Pirates._ "Hello!"