Resenting control in any shape or form, Tom naturally objected to
school.

His stepmother would have had him go--for his own sake as well as hers.
But his father took a not unusual Sark view of the matter.

"What's the odds?" said he. "He'll have the farm. Book-learning will be
no use to him," and in spite of Nancy's protests--which Tom regarded as
simply the natural outcrop of her ill-will towards him--the boy grew up
untaught and uncontrolled, and knowing none but the worst of all
masters--himself.

On occasion, when the tale of provocation reached its limit, his father
thrashed him, until there came a day when Tom upset the usual course of
proceedings by snatching the stick out of his father's hands, and would
have belaboured him in turn if he had not been promptly knocked down.

After that his father judged it best for all concerned that he should
flight his troublesome wings outside for a while. So he sent him off in
a trading-ship, in the somewhat forlorn hope that a knowledge of the
world would knock some of the devil out of him--a hope which, like many
another, fell short of accomplishment.

The world knocks a good deal out of a man, but it also knocks a good
deal in. Tom came back from his voyaging knowing a good many things that
he had not known when he started--a little English among others--and
most of the others things which had been more profitably left unlearnt.