“Long life?  Iss, fegs, I reckon, long enough a’ready!  Why, I mind the beginning of it all, I do.  I mind when there wasn’t a master mariner to Plymouth, that thought there was aught west of the Land’s End except herrings.  Why, they held them, pure wratches, that if you sailed right west away far enough, you’d surely come to the edge, and fall over cleve.  Iss—­’Twas dark parts round here, till Captain Will arose; and the first of it I mind was inside the bar of San Lucar, and he and I were boys about a ten year old, aboord of a Dartmouth ship, and went for wine, and there come in over the bar he that was the beginning of it all.”

“Columbus?”

“Iss, fegs, he did, not a pistol-shot from us; and I saw mun stand on the poop, so plain as I see you; no great shakes of a man to look to nether; there’s a sight better here, to plase me, and we was disappointed, we lads, for we surely expected to see mun with a goolden crown on, and a sceptre to a’s hand, we did, and the ship o’ mun all over like Solomon’s temple for gloory.  And I mind that same year, too, seeing Vasco da Gama, as was going out over the bar, when he found the Bona Speranza, and sailed round it to the Indies.  Ah, that was the making of they rascally Portingals, it was! . . .  And our crew told what they seen and heerd:  but nobody minded sich things.  ’Twas dark parts, and Popish, then; and nobody knowed nothing, nor got no schooling, nor cared for nothing, but scrattling up and down alongshore like to prawns in a pule.  Iss, sitting in darkness, we was, and the shadow of death, till the day-spring from on high arose, and shined upon us poor out-o’-the-way folk—­The Lord be praised!  And now, look to mun!” and he waved his hand all round—­“Look to mun!  Look to the works of the Lord!  Look to the captains!  Oh blessed sight!  And one’s been to the Brazils, and one to the Indies, and the Spanish Main, and the North-West, and the Rooshias, and the Chinas, and up the Straits, and round the Cape, and round the world of God, too, bless His holy name; and I seed the beginning of it; and I’ll see the end of it too, I will!  I was born into the old times:  but I’ll see the wondrous works of the new, yet, I will!  I’ll see they bloody Spaniards swept off the seas before I die, if my old eyes can reach so far as outside the Sound.  I shall, I knows it.  I says my prayers for it every night; don’t I, Mary?  You’ll bate mun, sure as Judgment, you’ll bate mun!  The Lord’ll fight for ye.  Nothing’ll stand against ye.  I’ve seed it all along—­ever since I was with young master to the Honduras.  They can’t bide the push of us!  You’ll bate mun off the face of the seas, and be masters of the round world, and all that therein is.  And then, I’ll just turn my old face to the wall, and depart in peace, according to his word.

“Deary me, now, while I’ve been telling with you, here’ve this little maid been and ate up all my sugar!”

“I’ll bring you some more,” said Amyas; whom the childish bathos of the last sentence moved rather to sighs than laughter.