He was not ten when, to the amazement of his friends in imitation of Leander but without the same inducements, he swam the half mile to the reefs of Castle Cornet and back again, through a boiling sea and rip-tides that ran like mill-races.  This performance he repeated again and again.  For milder amusement he would tramp to the water-lane that stole through the Moulin Huet, a bower of red roses and perfume, or walk by moonlight to the mystic cromlechs, where the early pagans and the warlocks and witches of later days flitted round the ruined altars.

Though Isaac was self-contained and resolute he had a restless spirit.  Fearless, without a touch of the braggart, his courage was of the valiant order, the quality that accompanies a lofty soul in a strong body.  For his constant courtesy and habit of making sacrifices for his friends, he was in danger of being canonized by his school-fellows.

About this time, shortly after his father’s death, it was suggested he should leave the Queen Elizabeth School on the Island and study at Southampton.  Here he tried his best, boy though he was, to live up to the standard of what he had been told were his obligations as a gentleman, acquiring, too, a little book-learning and much every-day knowledge.

Isaac’s holidays, always spent in his beloved Guernsey, increased the thirst for adventure.  The spirit of conquest, the controlling influence of his after life, grew upon him.  Something accomplished, something done, was the daily rule.  To scale an impossible cliff with the wings of circling sea-fowl beating in his face, to land a big conger eel without receiving a shock, to rescue a partridge from a falcon, to shoot a rabbit at fifty paces, to break a wild pony, or even to scan a complicated line in his syntax—­these were achievements, small perhaps, but typical of his desire.  His young soul was stirred; the blood coursed in his veins as the sap courses in the trees of the forest in spring; his mind, susceptible to the influences of nature, was strengthened and purified by these pursuits.

In the shelter of silent trossach, on wind-swept height, or on wildest, ever-restless sea, he would, as the mood seized him, take his solitary outings.  These jaunts, he told his mother, gave him time to reflect and resolve.  It was not strange that he selected a profession that presented the opportunities he craved.

* * * * *

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.