ng Dan's bewilderment,
repeated it.

'Yes, but look here,' said Dan. 'Drake he was a Devon man. The song says
so.'

'"_And_ ruled the Devon seas,"' Una went on. 'That's what I was
thinking--if you don't mind.'

Simon Cheyneys seemed to mind very much indeed, for he swelled in
silence while Puck laughed.

'Hutt!' he burst out at last, 'I've heard that talk too. If you listen
to them West Country folk, you'll listen to a pack o' lies. I believe
Frankie was born somewhere out west among the Shires, but his father had
to run for it when Frankie was a baby, because the neighbours was
wishful to kill him, d'ye see? He run to Chatham, old Parson Drake did,
an' Frankie was brought up in a old hulks of a ship moored in the Medway
river, same as it might ha' been the Rother. Brought up _at_ sea, you
might say, before he could walk _on_ land--nigh Chatham in Kent. And
ain't Kent back-door to Sussex? And don't that make Frankie Sussex? O'
course it do. Devon man! Bah! Those West Country boats they're always
fishin' in other folks' water.'

'I beg your pardon,' said Dan. 'I'm sorry.'

'No call to be sorry. You've been misled. I met Frankie at Rye Port when
my Uncle, that was the shipbuilder there, pushed me off his wharf-edge
on to Frankie's ship. Frankie had put in from Chatham with his rudder
splutted, and a man's arm--Moon's that 'ud be--broken at the tiller.
"Take this boy aboard an' drown him," says my Uncle, "and I'll mend your
rudder-piece for love."'

'What did your Uncle want you drowned for?' said Una.

'That was only his fashion of say-so, same as Mus' Robin. I'd a
foolishness in my head that ships could be builded out of iron.
Yes--iron ships! I'd made me a liddle toy one of iron plates beat out
thin--and she floated a wonder! But my Uncle, bein' a burgess of Rye,
and a shipbuilder, he 'prenticed me to Frankie in the fetchin' trade, to
cure this foolishness.'

'What was the fetchin' trade?' Dan interrupted.

'Fetchin' poor Flemishers and Dutchmen out o' the Low Countries into
England. The King o' Spain, d'ye see, he was burnin' 'em in those parts,
for to make 'em Papishers, so Frankie he fetched 'em away to _our_
parts, and a risky trade it was. His master wouldn't never touch it
while he lived, but he left his ship to Frankie when he died, and
Frankie turned her into this fetchin' trade. Outrageous cruel hard
work--on besom black nights bulting back and forth off they Dutch roads
with shoals on all sides,