The Mackintosh farm on Prince Edward Island was in the parish of Orwell
Head, and Donald's earliest transgressions and earliest pleasures were
runaway excursions to the wharves of that sleepy shore. To him Spruce
Wharf was a centre of glorious maritime adventure. The small sloops that
plied up and down the coast of the island, running in at the inlets, and
stopping to gather up the farmers' produce and take it to Charlottetown
markets, seemed to him as grand as Indiamen; and when, in his twelfth
year, he found himself launched in life as a boy-of-all-work on one of
these sloops, whose captain was a friend of his father's, he felt that
his fortune was made. And so it was. He was in the line of promotion by
virtue of his own enthusiasm. No plank too small for the born sailor to
swim by. Before Donald was twenty-five he himself commanded one of these
little coasting-vessels. From this he took a great stride forward, and
became first officer on the iron-clad steamer plying between
Charlottetown and the mainland. The winter service on this boat was
terrible,--ploughing and cutting through nearly solid ice for long days
and nights of storm.
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