England with folded arms was at peace. The Treaty of Versailles had terminated the disastrous war with America. The independence of the "Thirteen States" had been recognized. The world was drawing a long breath, filling its fighting lungs, awaiting the death struggle with Napoleon for the supremacy of Europe. Yet the spirit of war lingered in the air. It even drifted on the breeze across the Channel to Guernsey, and filtered through the trees that crowned the Lion's Rock at Cobo. It invaded the valleys of the Petit Bot and stirred the bulrushes in the marshes of Havelet. The pulse of our hero throbbed with the subtle infection. Not with the brute lust for other men's blood, but with the instinct of the true patriot to shed, if need be, his own blood to maintain the right. He would follow the example of his ancestors and fight and die, if duty called him, in defence of king and country.
The sweet arrogance of youth uplifted him. Earth, air and water conspired to encourage him. To satisfy this unspoken craving for action he would, from his outlook on the Jerbourg crags--where bold Sir Hugh had sat for just such purpose years before--watch the Weymouth luggers making bad weather of it beyond the Casquets; or challenge in his own boat the rip-tides between Sark and Brechou, and the combers that romped between St. Sampson and the Isle of Herm.
There was no limit to this boy's hardihood and daring. The more furious the gale the more congenial the task. Returning from these frequent baptisms of salt water, his Saxon fairness and Norman freshness aglow with spray, he would loiter on the beach to talk to the kelp gatherers raking amid the breakers, and to watch the mackerel boats, reefed down, flying to the harbour for shelter. The crayfish in the pools would tempt him, he would try his hand at sand-eeling, or watch the surf men feed a devil-fish to the crabs. Then up the gray benches of the furrowed cliffs, starred with silver lichens and stone-crop, to where ploughmen were leaving glistening furrows in the big parsnip fields. Then on through the tangle of sweet-briar, honeysuckle and wild roses, where birds nested in the perfumed foliage, until, the summit reached, surrounded by purple heather and golden gorse, he would look on the sea below, with Sark, like a "basking whale, burning in the sunset." Then he would hurry to tell his mother of the day's exploits, retiring to dream of strange lands and turbulent scenes, in which the roll of drums and roar of cannon seemed never absent.