in Queen Mary's day."

"Aye, but Spain has got all of America, pretty near, and the French are
nabbing the rest," said the pilot doubtfully.

"Nay, that's a bigger place than you guess, over yonder. Ever see the
map that Doctor Dee made for Queen Bess near thirty years ago? I
remember him showing it to my grandsire with the ink scarce dry on it.
The country Ralegh's people saw has got room for the whole of France and
England, and plenty timber and corn-land. Sir Walter he knew that."

There was plague in London when they landed, and all sought their
families in fear and trembling, not knowing what might have come and
gone in their absence. Hudson's house was at Mortlake on the Thames
above London, and there he was rejoiced to find all well. Young John
Hudson was brimful of Mr. Brereton's new Relacion of the Voyage of
Captain Bartholomew Gosnold and Captain Bartholomew Gilbert to the North
part of Virginia by permission of the honorable Knight Sir Walter
Ralegh. Strawberries bigger than those of England, and cherries in
clusters like grapes, blackbirds with carnation-colored wings, Indians
who painted their eyebrows white and made faces over mustard, were mixed
higgledy-piggledy in his bubbling talk. Hudson, turning the pages of the
new book, saw at once that on this voyage around Cape Cod the little
ship _Concord_ had sailed seas unknown to him.

"Why won't the Company send you to the Americas, Dad?" the boy asked
eagerly. "When will I be old enough to go to sea?"

"Wait till ye're fourteen at least, Jack," his father answered. "There's
much to learn before ye're a master mariner."

In the next few years things were not so well with English mariners as
they had been. Cecil and Howard, picking a quarrel with Ralegh, had him
shut up in the Tower. The Dutch were trading everywhere, seizing the
chances King James missed. But Hudson was in the employ of the Muscovy
Company like his father and grandfather, and the Russian fur trade was
making that Company rich.

Captain John Smith, a shrewd-faced soldier with merry eyes, appeared at
the house one day and told entertaining stories of his campaigns under
Prince Sigismund of Bohemia. He and the boy John drove the neighbors
nearly distracted with curiosity, one winter evening, signalling with
torches from the house to the river.[2] To anxious souls who surmised a
new Guy Fawkes conspiracy Captain Smith showed how he had once conveyed
a message to the garrison of a beleagu