lors. My Aunt answered him quite a piece. She was a notable woman.

'Then he come up--his long pennant trailing overside--his waistcloths
and netting tore all to pieces where the Spanishers had grappled, and
his sides black-smeared with their gun-blasts like candle-smoke in a
bottle. We hooked on to a lower port and hung.

'"Oh, Mus' Drake! Mus' Drake!" I calls up.

'He stood on the great anchor cathead, his shirt open to the middle, and
his face shining like the sun.

'"Why, Sim!" he says. Just like that--after twenty year! "Sim," he says,
"what brings you?"

'"Pudden," I says, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

'"You told me to bring cannon-shot next time, an' I've brought 'em."

'He saw we had. He ripped out a fathom and a half o' brimstone Spanish,
and he swung down on our rail, and he kissed me before all his fine
young captains. His men was swarming out of the lower ports ready to
unload us. When he saw how I'd considered all his likely wants, he
kissed me again.

'"Here's a friend that sticketh closer than a brother!" he says.
"Mistress," he says to my Aunt, "all you foretold on me was true. I've
opened that road from the East to the West, and I've buried my heart
beside it."

'"I know," she says. "That's why I be come."

'"But ye never foretold this"; he points to both they great fleets.

'"This don't seem to me to make much odds compared to what happens to a
man," she says. "Do it?"

'"Certain sure a man forgets to remember when he's proper mucked up with
work. Sim," he says to me, "we must shift every living Spanisher round
Dunkirk corner on to our Dutch sands before morning. The wind'll come
out of the North after this calm--same as it used--and then they're our
meat."

'"Amen," says I. "I've brought you what I could scutchel up of odds and
ends. Be you hit anywhere to signify?"

'"Oh, our folk'll attend to all that when we've time," he says. He turns
to talk to my Aunt, while his men flew the stuff out of our hold. I
think I saw old Moon amongst 'em, but he was too busy to more than
nod like. Yet the Spanishers was going to prayers with their bells and
candles before we'd cleaned out the ANTONY. Twenty-two ton o' useful
stuff I'd fetched him. '"Now, Sim," says my Aunt, "no more devouring of
Mus' Drake's time. He's sending us home in the Bridport hoy. I want to
speak to them young springalds again."

'"But here's our ship all ready and swept," I says.

'"Swep' an' garnished," says Frank