“Now; you mustn’t trouble his worship any more.”

“Trouble?  Let him tell till midnight, I shall be well pleased,” said Amyas, sitting down on the bench by him.  “Drawer! ale—­and a parcel of tobacco.”

And Amyas settled himself to listen, while the old man purred to himself—­

“Iss.  They likes to hear old Martin.  All the captains look upon old Martin.”

“Hillo, Amyas!” said Cary, “who’s your friend?  Here’s a man been telling me wonders about the River Plate.  We should go thither for luck there next time.”

“River Plate?” said old Martin.  “It’s I knows about the River Plate; none so well.  Who’d ever been there, nor heard of it nether, before Captain Will and me went, and I lived among the savages a whole year; and audacious civil I found ’em if they ’d had but shirts to their backs; and so was the prince o’ mun, that Captain Will brought home to King Henry; leastwise he died on the voyage; but the wild folk took it cruel well, for you see, we was always as civil with them as Christians, and if we hadn’t been, I should not have been here now.”

“What year was that?”

“In the fifteen thirty:  but I was there afore, and learnt the speech o’ mun; and that’s why Captain Will left me to a hostage, when he tuked their prince.”

“Before that?” said Cary; “why, the country was hardly known before that.”

The old man’s eyes flashed up in triumph.

“Knowed?  Iss, and you may well say that!  Look ye here!  Look to mun!” and he waved his hand round—­“There’s captains! and I’m the father of ’em all now, now poor Captain Will’s in gloory; I, Martin Cockrem! . . .  Iss, I’ve seen a change.  I mind when Tavistock Abbey was so full o’ friars, and goolden idols, and sich noxious trade, as ever was a wheat-rick of rats.  I mind the fight off Brest in the French wars—­Oh, that was a fight, surely!—­when the Regent and the French Carack were burnt side by side, being fast grappled, you see, because of Sir Thomas Knivet; and Captain Will gave him warning as he ran a-past us, saying, says he—­”

“But,” said Amyas, seeing that the old man was wandering away, “what do you mind about America?”

“America?  I should think so!  But I was a-going to tell you of the Regent—­and seven hundred Englishmen burnt and drowned in her, and nine hundred French in the Brest ship, besides what we picked up.  Oh dear!  But about America.”

“Yes, about America.  How are you the father of all the captains?”

“How? you ask my young master!  Why, before the fifteen thirty, I was up the Plate with Cabot (and a cruel fractious ontrustful fellow he was, like all they Portingals), and bid there a year and more, and up the Paraguaio with him, diskivering no end; whereby, gentles, I was the first Englishman, I hold, that ever sot a foot on the New World, I was!”

“Then here’s your health, and long life, sir!” said Amyas and Cary.