“Master Hudson, d’ye think the new King will light them other fires—­the ones at Smithfield?”

Hudson shook his head.  “That’s a thing no man can say for certain, John.  But there’s the Low Countries and the Americas to run to.  ’T is not as it was in Queen Mary’s day.”

“Aye, but Spain has got all of America, pretty near, and the French are nabbing the rest,” said the pilot doubtfully.

“Nay, that’s a bigger place than you guess, over yonder.  Ever see the map that Doctor Dee made for Queen Bess near thirty years ago?  I remember him showing it to my grandsire with the ink scarce dry on it.  The country Ralegh’s people saw has got room for the whole of France and England, and plenty timber and corn-land.  Sir Walter he knew that.”

There was plague in London when they landed, and all sought their families in fear and trembling, not knowing what might have come and gone in their absence.  Hudson’s house was at Mortlake on the Thames above London, and there he was rejoiced to find all well.  Young John Hudson was brimful of Mr. Brereton’s new Relacion of the Voyage of Captain Bartholomew Gosnold and Captain Bartholomew Gilbert to the North part of Virginia by permission of the honorable Knight Sir Walter Ralegh.  Strawberries bigger than those of England, and cherries in clusters like grapes, blackbirds with carnation-colored wings, Indians who painted their eyebrows white and made faces over mustard, were mixed higgledy-piggledy in his bubbling talk.  Hudson, turning the pages of the new book, saw at once that on this voyage around Cape Cod the little ship Concord had sailed seas unknown to him.

“Why won’t the Company send you to the Americas, Dad?” the boy asked eagerly.  “When will I be old enough to go to sea?”

“Wait till ye’re fourteen at least, Jack,” his father answered.  “There’s much to learn before ye’re a master mariner.”

In the next few years things were not so well with English mariners as they had been.  Cecil and Howard, picking a quarrel with Ralegh, had him shut up in the Tower.  The Dutch were trading everywhere, seizing the chances King James missed.  But Hudson was in the employ of the Muscovy Company like his father and grandfather, and the Russian fur trade was making that Company rich.

Captain John Smith, a shrewd-faced soldier with merry eyes, appeared at the house one day and told entertaining stories of his campaigns under Prince Sigismund of Bohemia.  He and the boy John drove the neighbors nearly distracted with curiosity, one winter evening, signalling with torches from the house to the river.[2] To anxious souls who surmised a new Guy Fawkes conspiracy Captain Smith showed how he had once conveyed a message to the garrison of a beleaguered city in this way.  Here was the code.  The first half of the alphabet was represented by single lights, the second half by pairs.  To secure attention three torches were shown at equal distances from one another, until a