The Golden Galleon. Robert Leighton

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      Jack Prynne stroked his beard, partly hiding his shamed face with his big work-worn hand.

      "When we went away," said he, "the town was ill-defended. Sir Francis Drake was absent."

      "The more reason why every man should have remained to protect his home and do his duty by his neighbours," returned Whiddon. "Drake cannot well be in two places at once. What astonisheth me is, that you should all have come trooping back the instant you heard that Sir Francis had again taken up his residence in the town. Sure, 'tis a very high compliment to a man when his mere presence among us should inspire such confidence and allay such a general panic."

      "There goes her anchor!" cried Timothy Trollope. And as he spoke there was a splash of water at the ship's bow, followed by the familiar rumbling noise of her hempen cable as it tore through the hawse-pipe.

      Now that the vessel was close at hand it could be seen that she was very much battered by the storms and conflicts through which she had passed during her long voyaging in distant seas. The lower timbers of her hull were overgrown with barnacles and slimy green weeds. Above the water-line there were many shot-holes, patched up with raw hides, sheets of lead, or rough-hewn balks of wood; and in one place, abaft her main-chains, a cannon-ball could be seen deeply embedded in the stout oak. In place of her original mizzen-mast there was the trunk of a forest tree, with the bark still upon it; and the lateen yard was made of spliced bamboo. Her standing rigging was mended with strands of twisted cow-hide. She was a ship of about a hundred tons burden, built with a high castle at her poop and with bulging sides. Her bows were as round and blunt as the breasts of the noisy sea-birds that floated near her in the harbour, feeding on the garbage thrown from the fishing-boats.

      She had not long been at anchor when a boat was put off from her, and was rowed by two men towards the stone-built slip beside which Gilbert Oglander and Timothy Trollope were standing. The boat had four occupants in addition to the two seamen who pulled at the oars. They were a black-bearded, middle-aged man who sat on the stern gunwale, and who seemed by his frequent commands to the rowers to be in authority; a woman, who sat near him; a beardless youth, who was crouching down in the bottom of the boat; and an aged, white-haired man, with a brown sunburned face and a long silvery beard, who was bending forward over the prow as if in desperate eagerness to spring on shore.

      As the little craft came yet nearer, Timothy Trollope observed that the passengers seemed to be no less weary and tattered than the ship from which they had just come. The old man at the bow wore no clothing save a ragged canvas shirt and a pair of wide, ill-made trunks. One of the rowers had but a single sleeve to his jerkin, and his hair was long and matted. The woman wore a large black cloak, whose hood was drawn over her head, leaving visible no more of her than her thin olive-coloured face and her sparkling dark eyes. She paid scarcely any regard to what was passing, but sat like an image, gazing stonily before her.

      "Ship your oar, Pascoe!" cried the man at the stern. "Pull three more strokes, Mason!"

      He rose to his feet as he gave these orders, showing himself to be very tall. None of the men on shore seemed to know him; nor did he greet them, even as a stranger newly arrived from foreign climes might have been expected to do.

      The old man at the bow was the first to leap on shore. And, having done so, he fell down upon his knees, reverently pressed his lips upon the stones, and murmured the words:

      "Thanks be to God! Thanks be to God!"

      Then he stood up beside the boat and held it by the gunwale while the woman and the two other passengers stepped ashore.

      Gilbert Oglander paid but small regard to them, little dreaming of the important parts they were destined to play in his life. He only noticed as they passed him that the tall man's otherwise handsome face was marred by an unsightly scar on the right cheek, that the youth seemed to be about sixteen years of age, and that the woman, when she spoke to either of her companions, did so in a foreign tongue.

      The youth who had come ashore paused for a moment, tightening his sword-belt, and as he did so he glanced aside at the old man.

      "Art going back to the ship, Jacob?" he inquired with seeming carelessness, yet with a look of strange eagerness in his dark eyes as if much depended upon the veteran's answer.

      The graybeard slowly shook his head, and the deep-drawn sigh that issued from his lips seemed to Gilbert Oglander to betoken a whole world of past troubles and present gratitude.

      "Wherefore should I go back, Master Philip?" said he in a husky voice. "Have I not had enough of the pestilent old hulk, think you? I have done all that was needed of me, I trow; and since, as you well know, I did but engage to work my passage home, there be no wages due to me and we are quits. As to my worldly belongings," he added with a hollow, uneasy laugh as he rested his bony hand upon the leathern bag that hung at his side, "this wallet containeth all my chattels and goods. Ay, all that I am worth in the world. And little enough, you'll be saying, as the sole outcome of all my perils and wanderings. Howbeit," he went on, not heeding that the young man had already passed beyond hearing and was continuing his way up the slip, "there's but small use in complaining. And after all, God hath been truly merciful in that He hath brought me safely back to my dear native land. Sure 'tis worth all my twenty-three years of voyaging to be back once more in Plymouth town and to again set foot on English ground!"

      "GOD HATH BEEN TRULY MERCIFUL IN THAT HE HATH BROUGHT ME SAFELY BACK"

      A gust of cold wind blew round one of the stone piers of the wharf near which he lingered. He shivered slightly, and drew his ragged canvas shirt closer about his bare chest and neck. Then his moist blue eyes surveyed the group of men who now stood apart watching the boat returning to the ship.

      "I don't see none o' my old friends among you, my masters," said he, looking from one to the other. "You'm all strangers to me. And peradventure I am as great a stranger to yourselves. But the time hath been when I was as well known in Plymouth as the tower of St. Andrew's church yonder." A forced, unnatural smile flitted about the parched blue lips as he added, addressing no one in particular: "Jacob Hartop is my name—Jacob Hartop that went out with John Hawkins in the year 1567, and that hath now comehome after three-and-twenty years of foreign travel and fighting and slavish toil."

      He held out his hand to grasp that of one of the older men who stood near. As he did so Timothy Trollope noticed that his wrist bore an indented mark upon it, as if it had been too tightly clasped by a bracelet. Several of the bystanders now shook hands with him.

      "Thou'rt welcome home, friend Hartop," said one.

      "God give you peace and joy, my master!" said another.

      "And may you never need to wander from England's shores again!" said a third.

      Captain Whiddon then stepped forward, and said he:

      "Be you related to young George Hartop that fell in the great fight against the Invincible Armada of Spain?"

      Jacob Hartop stared blankly before him. It was evident that he knew naught of the great fight referred to. He was about to answer when the touch of a hand on his thin bare arm caused him to turn suddenly round, and he stood face to face with Gilbert Oglander.

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