Boyhood came, and with it an increased desire to rove, and a more fervent thirst for adventure. At school our hero obtained the name that stuck to him through life—“Wandering Will.” The seaport town in the west of England in which he dwelt had been explored by him in all its ramifications. There was not a retired court, a dark lane, or a blind alley, with which he was unfamiliar. Every height, crag, cliff, plantation, and moor within ten miles of his father’s mansion had been thoroughly explored by Will before he was eight years of age, and his aspiring spirit longed to take a wider flight.
“I want to go to sea, father,” said he one evening after tea, looking in his father’s face with much more of the leonine gaze than the father had bargained for. His training up to that point had been almost too successful!
This was not the first time that the boy had stated the same wish; his gaze, therefore, did not quail when his father looked up from his newspaper and said sternly— “Fiddlesticks, boy! hold your tongue.”
“Father,” repeated Will, in a tone that caused Mr Osten to lay down his paper, “I want to go to sea.”
“Then the sooner you give up the idea the better, for I won’t let you.”
“Father,” continued Will, “you remember the proverb that you’ve often told me has been your motto through life, ‘Never venture never win?’”
“Certainly; you know that I have often urged you to act on that principle at school. Why do you ask the question?”
“Because I mean to act on it now, and go to sea,” replied Will firmly.
“What? without permission, without clothes, and without money; for you shan’t have a six-pence from me?”
“Yes,” replied Will.