Other words followed. "I shall see your father. Perhaps we can induce him to let you join one of my vessels," observed the ship-owner from Whitehaven. "You are very young, but old enough to become an apprentice or ship's-boy."
Young John Paul ran home as fast as his legs could carry him, his heart beating with joy. Oh, such luck! It seemed to him he had always wanted to be a sailor—a real sailor, one who could tread a big vessel's deck, climb her rigging, and go far out to sea past that misty blue line that separated home waters from the mystery and adventure of the domain lying leagues beyond.
Since he was a mere baby he recalled that he had always had a passion to sail something, even so simple a thing as a leaf, the half of a walnut shell, a bit of wood supporting a paper sail. And, in the beginning, the duck-pond, a horse-trough, or a puddle of rainwater, had been his sea. But he outgrew these limitations as he outgrew his kilts: more room must be provided for his bounding spirits and expanding ambition. Then had come first thoughts of the seashore; father's and mother's warnings that the strong tides of the Solway were too dangerous to play with, had only increased his desire to tussle with them. So he had run away, been sternly chastised, had run away again—until at length, despairing of restraining his son from the natural craving of his heart, John Paul senior threw away his switch and left the youngster to the care of Providence whenever his footsteps prompted him waterward.
As time went on, young John had grown into a sturdy lad whose chief delight was to sail off in the fishermen's boats for a day's catch. What he dreamed, what he planned, as he watched the far horizon, no one knows, for he was not the kind of a boy to tell others of his inner thoughts at that age. But that he did have frequent golden dreams we may rest assured, since, between the times he was making himself useful in casting and hauling in the nets, his older comrades often caught him in abstracted study of distant spaces.
In those days Scottish schools were not what they are now. There were very few of them then, and the instruction had not begun to reach the thoroughness it has since attained. Less than a dozen children attended the little school in Arbigland to which Johnnie Paul had been consigned at the age of eight. It was so difficult to get a teacher that sometimes for weeks at a time there was no one to hold forth in that office. These occasions were very satisfying to our Johnnie Paul, for the truth is, he much preferred paddling around the water to fingering over the pages of his books. But he was not lazy, and during the short time he did spend under the roof of a schoolhouse, he must have applied himself, for the records show that at twelve years of age he could figure and read and write very well indeed for that period.
The lad's mother had been Jean Macduff, the daughter of an Argyll Highlander who had moved into the Lowlands, there to abandon his trade of armorer and become a farmer near New Abbey. Jean Macduff later left her home and came to Arbigland to accept a position as lady's-maid to a Mrs. Craik whose husband was a prosperous land-owner possessing an extensive estate and splendid buildings on top of the promontory hanging above the shores of the Solway.
When quite a young man, John's father, a Lowlander, had also found employment on the Craik estate as gardener, and later by reason of his faithful work and popularity in the community, he had been made game-warden. The young gardener and the young lady's-maid soon fell in love with each other, were married, and in due course of time were blessed with five children, of whom Johnnie was the youngest. He was born in the year 1747. William, the brother, had gone to live with a cousin, William Jones, a childless planter in Virginia, before John was born. Willie had never been back since that day. He had been adopted by the distant cousin, and might never return, John's parents said, but it was hoped and expressed in letters that he would some of these days make the long voyage back to old Scotland for a brief visit. How Johnnie did yearn to see this big brother whose letters he loved to read but whom he had never seen! Of late he had even dared to think of making a voyage himself to American shores, there to seek out the long-absent one.
The Paul cottage, overgrown with creepers, and sheltered from the fierce northeast winds by thick trees and shrubbery, stood so close to the seashore that it was never free from the sound of lapping waters and the boom of breakers. It was the boy's delight, before he went to sleep of a night, and before he arose of a morning, to lie for some time and listen to the music of the waves, his vivid fancy investing these voices with the power of telling him strange tales of strange peoples and strange places, far, far away.
When young John was not on the water, in school, or at home, he could usually be found somewhere about Mr. Craik's estate. He was kindly treated, and the playmate of the sons of the good laird's family. With the democracy of boyhood he and the Craik lads enjoyed climbing everything in the neighborhood, from the highest trees to the most rugged cliffs, where lurked unexplored treasures in the shape of sea-birds' eggs. They penetrated caves and caverns under the cliffs with that sublime disregard of tides which is boyhood's happy prerogative. They lingered at the hearths of Old Elspeth and Meg Merrilies, in the valley below, drinking in tales of elf and goblin—too frightened to go home in the dusk, until the servants of the big house finally hunted up and retrieved them.
And now all this commonplace existence was to be traded off for the more alluring one of a sailor's life—if only the stranger from Whitehaven did not forget to keep his word and ask Johnnie Paul's father and mother to permit him to go off to sea—and if that father and mother could be prevailed upon to give their consent!