And to him, above all, applied his own triumphant lines, those which he addressed to W. E. Henley, another writer, a man of like courageous outlook, who, like himself, "in the fell grip of circumstances, had not winced nor cried aloud:
"... Small the pipe; but oh! do thou, Peak-faced and suffering piper, blow therein The dirge of heroes dead; and to these sick, These dying, sound the triumph over death. Behold! each greatly breathes; each tastes a joy Unknown before in dying; for each knows A hero dies with him--though unfulfilled, Yet conquering truly--and not dies in vain."
At present he was engaged upon _Kidnapped_, that admirable piece of fiction which he had begun, "partly as a lark and partly as a pot-boiler." It was a relief, after the concentrated horror of _Dr. Jekyll_, to escape into the Scottish heather-scent and to feel the salt sea-wind whistling through the cordage of _Kidnapped_.
"She stood on the bulwarks and held on by a stay, the wind blowing in her petticoats.
Stevenson was desirous to "get free of this prison-yard of the abominably ugly, where I take my daily exercise with my contemporaries." Possibly he recognised that the amazing popularity of _Jekyll_ had been due to the morbid attractiveness of its subject, rather than to its merits of craftsmanship; for, as he had averred, "I know that good work sometimes hits; but, with my hand on my heart, I think it is an accident." But now he was at liberty to give play to his infinite variety upon a true boys' book,--a story to satisfy the inveterate boyishness of his own heart. "Of the romance of boyhood and adolescence, it has been said, he is an unsurpassed master ... the philosophy of life developed in both his essays and romances is that rather of a gifted boy than a mature man." (J. W. Mackail.) And even the girls of Stevenson's imagination have been accused of being "boys in petticoats." The phrase has reason. "I have never admired a girl," he wrote, and again, "I have never pleased myself with any women of mine." The other sex remained for him, throughout, a mystery which he hardly cared to solve,--a sealed book which he was not desirous to open. "Of the two eternal factors in the destiny of man, warfare and love," although he allowed that "to love is the great amulet which makes the world a garden," he preferred to deal almost exclusively with the warfare.