udder-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, and having to hark out for the frish-frish-frish-like of a
Spanish galliwopses' oars creepin' up on ye. Frankie 'ud have the tiller
and Moon he'd peer forth at the bows, our lantern under his skirts, till
the boat we was lookin' for 'ud blurt up out o' the dark, and we'd lay
hold and haul aboard whoever 'twas--man, woman, or babe--an' round we'd
go again, the wind bewling like a kite in our riggin's, and they'd drop
into the hold and praise God for happy deliverance till they was all
sick.

'I had nigh a year at it, an' we must have fetched off--oh, a hundred
pore folk, I reckon. Outrageous bold, too, Frankie growed to be.
Outrageous cunnin' he was. Once we was as near as nothin' nipped by a
tall ship off Tergoes Sands in a snowstorm. She had the wind of us, and
spooned straight before it, shootin' all bow guns. Frankie fled inshore
smack for the beach, till he was atop of the first breakers. Then he
hove his anchor out, which nigh tore our bows off, but it twitched us
round end-for-end into the wind, d'ye see, an' we clawed off them sands
like a drunk man rubbin' along a tavern bench. When we could see, the
Spanisher was laid flat along in the breakers with the snows whitening
on his wet belly. He thought he could go where Frankie went.'

'What happened to the crew?' said Una.

'We didn't stop,' Simon answered. 'There was a very liddle new baby
in our hold, and the mother she wanted to get to some dry bed middlin'
quick. We runned