a-going ship.

"You are not tired?" Anthony said to his sister, as they walked back to
the inn from which they were to see the spectacle. She shook her head
happily; and Anthony, looking at her, once more questioned himself
whether Mistress Corbet were right or not.

When they had settled down at last to their window, the crowds were
gathering thicker every moment about the entrance to the ship, which lay
in the creek perhaps a hundred yards from the inn, and on the road along
which the Queen was to come from Greenwich. Anthony felt his whole heart
go out in sympathy to these joyous shouting folk beneath, who were here
to celebrate the gallant pluck of a little bearded man and his followers,
who for the moment stood for England, and in whose presence just now the
Queen herself must take second place. Even the quacks and salesmen who
were busy in their booths all round used patriotism to push their
bargains.

"Spanish ointment, Spanish ointment!" bellowed a red-faced herbalist in a
doctor's gown, just below the window. "The Dons know what's best for
wounds and knocks after Frankie Drake's visit"; and the crowd laughed and
bought up his boxes. And another drove a roaring business in green glass
beads, reported to be the exact size of the emeralds taken from the
_Cacafuego_; and others sold little models of the _Pelican_, warranted to
frighten away Dons and all other kinds of devils from the house that
possessed one. Isabel laughed with pleasure, and sent Anthony down to buy
one for her.

But perhaps more than all else the sight of the seamen themselves stirred
his heart. Most of them, officers as well as men, were dressed with
absurd extravagance, for the prize-money, even after the deduction of the
Queen's lion-share, had been immense, but beneath their plumed and
jewel-buckled caps, brown faces looked out, alert and capable, with tight
lips and bright, puckered eyes, with something of the terrier in their
expression. There they swaggered along with a slight roll in their walk,
by ones or twos, through the crowd that formed lanes to let them pass,
and surged along in their wake, shouting after them and clapping them on
the back. Anthony watched them eagerly as they made their way from all
directions to where the _Pelican_ lay; for it was close on noon. Then
from far away came the boom of the Tower guns, and then the nearer crash
of those that guarded the dockyard; and last the deafening roar of the
_Pelican_ broadsid