On such days Taffy, looking up from his work, would catch sight of a small figure on the cliff-top leaning aslant to the wind and watching.
For the child was adventurous and took no account of his lameness.
Perhaps if he thought of it at all, having no chance to compare himself with other children, he accepted his lameness as a condition of childhood--something he would grow out of.

His mother could not keep him indoors; he fidgeted continually.

But he would sit or stand quiet by the hour on the cliff-top watching the men as they drilled and fixed the dynamite, and waiting for the bang of it.

Best of all, however, were the days when his grandfather allowed him inside the light-house, to clamber about the staircase and ladders, to watch the oiling and trimming of the great lantern, and the ships moving slowly on the horizon.

He asked a thousand questions about them.
"I think," said he one day before he was three years old, "that my father is in one of those ships." "Bless the child!" exclaimed old Pezzack.