Y OF RYE, to
be sure; and not empty-handed. I'd been loadin' her for three days
with the pick of our yard. We was ballasted on cannon-shot of all three
sizes; and iron rods and straps for his carpenters; and a nice passel of
clean three-inch oak planking and hide breech-ropes for his cannon, and
gubs of good oakum, and bolts o' canvas, and all the sound rope in the
yard. What else could I ha' done? I knowed what he'd need most after a
week's such work. I'm a shipbuilder, little maid.

'We'd a fair slant o' wind off Dungeness, and we crept on till it fell
light airs and puffed out. The Spanishers was all in a huddle over by
Calais, and our ships was strawed about mending 'emselves like dogs
lickin' bites. Now and then a Spanisher would fire from a low port, and
the ball 'ud troll across the flat swells, but both sides was finished
fightin' for that tide.

'The first ship we foreslowed on, her breastworks was crushed in, an'
men was shorin' 'em up. She said nothing. The next was a black pinnace,
his pumps clackin' middling quick, and he said nothing. But the third,
mending shot-holes, he spoke out plenty. I asked him where Mus' Drake
might be, and a shiny-suited man on the poop looked down into us, and
saw what we carried.

'"Lay alongside you!" he says. "We'll take that all."

'"'Tis for Mus' Drake," I says, keeping away lest his size should lee
the wind out of my sails.

'"Hi! Ho! Hither! We're Lord High Admiral of England! Come alongside, or
we'll hang ye," he says.

''Twas none of my affairs who he was if he wasn't Frankie, and while he
talked so hot I slipped behind a green-painted ship with her top-sides
splintered. We was all in the middest of 'em then.

'"Hi! Hoi!" the green ship says. "Come alongside, honest man, and I'll
buy your load. I'm Fenner that fought the seven Portugals--clean out of
shot or bullets. Frankie knows me."

'"Ay, but I don't," I says, and I slacked nothing.

'He was a masterpiece. Seein' I was for goin' on, he hails a Bridport
hoy beyond us and shouts, "George! Oh, George! Wing that duck. He's
fat!" An' true as we're all here, that squatty Bridport boat rounds to
acrost our bows, intendin' to stop us by means o' shooting.

'My Aunt looks over our rail. "George," she says, "you finish with your
enemies afore you begin on your friends."

'Him that was laying the liddle swivel-gun at us sweeps off his hat an'
calls her Queen Bess, and asks if she was selling liquor to pore dry
sai