At Play

Imagine a child who has a number of toy soldiers and a toy fort

—troopers, their outpost, and Indians.

However, he has just read a tale of pyrates and he doesn’t want to play as usual.

Straightaway the troopers shift into Spanish soldiers and the Indians become pyrates. The outpost in the South West—She Wore a Yellow Ribbon—is changed in an old Spanish fort—Distant Drums—and relocated along the bank of a muddy river into the depths of Venezuelan forest—very akin to the swamps of Florida in his alchemycal imagination. Of course, the pyrates undertake an expedition—faint resonance of L’Olonnais’ feats—to take by storm the Spanish castillo.

The cover illustration of the pyrates novel—I Pirati della Malesia—portrays a vessel, perhaps a gunboat—model for the cardboard ship specially built by the child for his crew of daring freebooters.

At last, he plays.

The vessel sails along the green-shaded coast covered by a thickset forest
… … …
—the boats are sent ashore in squally weather
… … …
—a march through the forest is made with great hardhips and perils
… … …
—the Spanish fort is bloodily stormed with cutlasses and pistols
… … …

And then the child says suddenly to himself

—Why not draw from the game a written tale?

Enraptured, he gets the requisite writing tools and begins to write.

Childhood—toys and games—imagination—books

—Here are the needful features of adventure.

The writer of adventure tales, which is not such if he has not maintained a contact with childhood, works in a way very like that of the child at play

—a sorcerer transfiguring the waking world in a dreamworld

—with wider readings in literature, not excluding the field of history

—And another essential feature of adventure

—Remembrance …

… … …

Writing an adventure novel may be like playing …

« … substantial, healthy sustenance …» for imagery …

Adventure Crossway

#Adventure