The Cottage in the Woods
Lake Sunapee, New Hampshire
July 23, 1927
Dear Alan:
Thank you a lot for your very mysterious letter from Honolulu. I wish I could have been with you. But the Congressmen and their families must have been a bore. I could have helped you concoct a regular mutiny, and, with me aboard, you may be sure it would have been done in a piratical way. I should have accosted the desperate-looking sailor and become acquainted with him. That would have been the first step.
Well, I feel tempted to sail full force into my own adventures, even if they are not so exciting and mysterious as your own. For the adventures that have befallen me since you set sail for Sulu are wilder and rasher than anything you ever heard me tell you before.
You know very well (better than anyone, I think) my profound devotion to pirates and things piratical. And you know, too, about the pirate tales
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