rty years of seafaring life, coupled with a rapidly increasing
tendency to suffer from severe attacks of rheumatism. And they differed
in dress as greatly as in their personal appearance; for while the
merchant was soberly if not somewhat sombrely garbed in dark brown
broadcloth, with a soft, broad-brimmed felt hat to match, the captain
(in rank defiance of the sumptuary laws then existing) sported trunk
hosen of pale pink satin, a richly embroidered and padded satin doublet
of the same hue, confined at the waist by a belt of green satin heavily
broidered with gold thread, from which depended on one side a long
rapier and on the other a wicked-looking Venetian dagger with jewelled
hilt and sheath, while, surmounting his grizzled and rather scanty
locks, he wore, jauntily set on one side, a Venetian cap of green velvet
adorned with a large gold and cameo brooch which secured a long green
feather drooping gracefully over the wearer's left shoulder. But let
not the unsophisticated reader imagine, in the innocence of his heart,
that the garb above described was that usually affected by mariners of
the Elizabethan period, while at sea. It was not. But they frequently
displayed a weakness for showy dress while in port, and especially when
about to go ashore for the first time after the termination of a voyage.

"Welcome home again, Cap'n John," exclaimed Marshall, grasping the hand
of the sailor and wringing it so heartily that poor Burroughs winced at
the pain of his rheumatism-racked wrist and shoulder. "I am glad to see
you safely back, for I was beginning to feel a bit uneasy lest the King
of Spain had caught you in his embargo."

"Iss, fegs; and so mun very nearly did," answered the captain; "indeed,
if it hadn't ha' been for young Garge Saint Leger--who, bein' out of his
time, I've made pilot in place of poor Matthews, who was killed in a
bout wi' the Barbary rovers on our outward voyage--he'd ha' had us, sure
as pigs baint nightingales. But Garge have got the fiend's own gift for
tongues and languages, and the night avore we sailed he happened to be
ashore lookin' round Santander, and while he were standin' on one side
of a pillar in a church he heard two Spanishers on t'other side of that
there same pillar talkin' about the embargo that King Philip was goin'
to declare again' the English at midnight that very night as ever was.
Like a good boy, Garge waited until the two Spanishers had left the
church, and then