Long and anxiously did I ponder over my decision. Those only who have known the witchery of the "summer Isles of Eden," have felt the charm of the dream-life of the Southern Main--the sorcery of that lotus-eating existence, alternating with the fierce hazards and stormy delights which give a richness to life unknown to a guarded, narrowed civilisation--can gauge my irresolution.
I had well-nigh resolved to adhere to the trader's life--until I had made a fortune with which I could return in triumph--when I thought of my mother! The old house, with its broad, stone-paved verandah came back to me--the large, "careless-ordered" garden with its trailing, tropical shrubs and fruit-trees--the lordly araucarias, the boat-house, the stone-walled bath wherein I had learned to swim--all came back in that moment when memory recalled the scenes and surroundings of my early life. I could hear a voice ever low and sweet, as in the days of my childhood, which said, "Oh! my boy! my boy! come back--let me see my darling's face before I die."
I was conquered--the temptations of the strange life, with its sorceries and phantasms, which had so long enveloped me, were swept away like a ghost-procession at dawn. And in their place came the steadfast resolve to return to the home of my youth, thenceforward to pursue such modes of life as might be marked out for me. In a new land like my birth-place, with a continent for an arena, I had no fear but that a career would open itself for me. In no country under heaven are there so many chances of success, so many roads to fortune, as in the lone wastes upon which the Southern Cross looks down. On land or sea--the tracks are limitless--the avenues to fortune innumerable. Gold was to be had for the seeking; silver and gems lay as yet in their desert solitudes, only awaiting the adventurer who, strong in the daring of manhood, should compel the waste to disclose its secrets--only awaited the hour and the man.
For such enterprises was I peculiarly fitted. So much could then be said without boast or falsehood on my part. My frame, inured to withstand every change of temperature which sea or land could furnish, was of unusual strength. By hard experience I had learned to bear myself masterfully among men of widely various dispositions and characters. I took my stand henceforth as a citizen of the world--as a rover on sea and land--as more than a suppliant to fortune, a "Conquistador."