Pool. Then I pulled down the
stream, with the ebb, as far as Wapping, where I was much shocked by
the sight of the pirates' gallows, with seven dead men hung in chains
together there, for taking the ship Delight, so a waterman told me, on
the Guinea Coast, the year before. I left my boat at Wapping Stairs,
while I went into a pastry-cook's shop to buy cake; for I was now
hungry. The pastry-cook was also a vintner. His tables were pretty well
crowded with men, mostly seafaring men, who were drinking wine together,
talking of politics. I knew nothing whatever about politics, but hearing
the Duke of Monmouth named I pricked up my ears to listen. My father had
told me, in his last illness, when the news of the death of Charles the
Second reached us, that trouble would come to England through this Duke,
because, he said, "he will never agree with King James." Many people
(the Duke himself being one of them) believed that this James Scott,
Duke of Monmouth, was the son of a very beautiful woman by Charles the
Second, who (so the tale went) had married her in his wanderings abroad,
while Cromwell ruled in England here. I myself shall ever believe this
story. I am quite sure, now, in my own mind, that Monmouth was our
rightful King. I have heard accounts of this marriage of Charles the
Second from people who were with him in his wanderings. When Charles the
Second died (being poisoned, some said, by his brother James, who wished
to seize the throne while Monmouth was abroad, unable to claim his
rights) James succeeded to the crown. At the time of which I write he
had been King for about two months. I did not know anything about his
merits as a King; but hearing the name of Monmouth I felt sure, from the
first, that I should hear more of what my father had told me.

One of the seamen, a sour-looking, pale-faced man, was saying that
Holland was full of talk that the Duke was coming over, to try for the
Kingdom. Another said that it wasn't the Duke of Monmouth but the Duke
of Argyle that was coming, to try, not for England, but for Scotland. A
third said that all this was talk, for how could a single man, without
twenty friends in the world, get through a cruising fleet? "How could he
do anything, even if he did land?"

"Ah," said another man. "They say that the West is ready to rally around
him. That's what they say."

"Well," said the first, raising his cup. "Here's to King James, I say.
England's had enough of civil troubles.