Twice Chalmers had saved others from drowning.  Three times he himself, as the result of his daring adventures in the sea, was carried home, supposed to be dead by drowning.

At another time he, with two other boys, thrust a tarred herring-box into the sea from the sandy shore between the two rocky points where the western sea came up the narrow Loch Fyne.

“Look at James!” shouted one of the boys to his companions as Chalmers leapt into the box.

It almost turned over, and he swayed and rolled and then steadied as the box swung out from the shore.

The other boys, laughing and shouting, towed him and his boat through the sea as they walked along the shore.  Suddenly, as they talked, they staggered forward.  The cord had snapped and they fell on the sand, still laughing, but when they stood up again the laughter died on their lips.  James was being swiftly carried out by the current to sea—­and in a tarred herring-box!  He had no paddle, and his hands were of no effect in trying to move the boat toward the shore.

The boys shouted.  There came an answering cry from the door of a cottage in the village.  A fisherman came swinging down the beach, strode to his boat, took the two boys into it, and taking an oar himself and giving the other to the two boys, they pulled out with the tide.  They reached James and rescued him just as the herring-box was sinking.  He went home to the little cottage where he lived, and his mother gave him a proper thrashing.

Some of James’ schoolfellows used to go on Sundays to a school in Inverary.  He made up his mind to join them.  The class met in the vestry of the United Presbyterian Church there.  After their lesson they went together into the church to hear a closing address.  Mr. Meikle, the minister, who was also superintendent of the school, one afternoon took from his pocket a magazine (a copy of the “Presbyterian Record").  From this magazine he read a letter from a brave missionary in the far-off cannibal islands of Fiji.  The letter told of the savage life there and of how, already, the story of Jesus was leading the men no longer to drag their victims to the cannibal ovens, nor to pile up the skulls of their enemies so as to show their own bravery.  The writer said they were beginning happier lives in which the awful terror of the javelin and the club, and the horror of demons and witches was gone.

When Mr. Meikle had finished reading the magazine he folded it up again and then looked round on all the boys in the school, saying: 

“I wonder if there is a boy here this afternoon who will become a missionary, and by and by bring the Gospel to other such cannibals as those?”

Even as the minister said those words, the adventurous heart of young Chalmers leapt in reply as he said to himself, “Yes, God helping me, I will.”

He was just a freckled, dark-haired boy with hazel eyes, a boy tingling with the joy of the open air and with the love of the heave and flow of the sea.  But when he made up his mind to do a thing, however great the difficulties or dangers, James usually carried it through.