sight for sore eyes, Master Richard," he said; "it's many a
long day since thou was here to pester me with thy questions. And all's
strong again--no bones broken? And now I'll teach thee to make a
galleon, like as I promised."

"Will you, indeed?" said Dickie, trembling with joy and pride.

"That will I," said the man, and threw up his pointed beard in a jolly
laugh. "And see what I've made thee while thou'st been lazying in bed--a
real English ship of war."

He laid down the auger he held and went into a low, rough shed, and next
moment came out with a little ship in his hand--a perfect model of the
strange high-built ships Dickie could see on the river.

[Illustration: "'TIS THE PICTURE,' SAID HE PROUDLY, 'OF MY OLD SHIP,
"THE GOLDEN VENTURE"'"

[_Page 97_]

"'Tis the picture," said he, proudly, "of my old ship, _The Golden
Venture_, that I sailed in with Master Raleigh, and help to sink the
accursed Armada, and clip the King of Spain his wings, and singe his
beard."

"The Armada!" said Dickie, with a new and quite strange feeling, rather
like going down unexpectedly in a lift. "The _Spanish_ Armada?"

"What other?" asked the ship-builder. "Thou'st heard the story a
thousand times."

"I want to hear it again," Dickie said. And heard the story of England's
great danger and her great escapes. It was just the same story as the
one you read in your history book--and yet how different, when it was
told by a man who had been there, who had felt the danger, known the
escape. Dickie held his breath.

"And so," the story ended, "the breath of the Lord went forth and the
storm blew, and fell on the fleet of Spain, and scattered them; and they
went down in our very waters, they and their arms and their treasure,
their guns and their gunners, their mariners and their men-of-war. And
the remnant was scattered and driven northward, and some were wrecked on
the rocks, and some our ships met and dealt with, and some poor few made
shift to get back across the sea, trailing home like wounded mallards,
to tell the King their master what the Lord had done for England."

"How long ago was it, all this?" Dickie asked. If his memory served it
was hundreds of years ago--three, five--he could not remember how many,
but hundreds. Could this man, whose hair was only just touched with
gray, be hundreds of years old?

"How long?--a matter of twenty years or thereabouts," said the
ship-builder. "See, the pretty little ship; and thy