The road, too, was thick with
vehicles and pedestrians.
It was still early when he met his party at the inn, and Hubert took them
immediately to see the _Pelican_ that was drawn up in a little creek on
the south bank. Mistress Margaret had not come, so the four went together
all over the ship that had been for these years the perilous home of this
sunburnt lad they all loved so well. Hubert pointed out Drake's own cabin
at the poop, with its stern-windows, where the last sacrament of the two
friends had been celebrated; and where Drake himself had eaten in royal
fashion to the sound of trumpets and slept with all-night sentries at his
door. He showed them too his own cabin, where he had lived with three
more officers, and the upper poop-deck where Drake would sit hour after
hour with his spy-glass, ranging the horizons for treasure-ships. And he
showed them, too, the high forecastle, and the men's quarters; and Isabel
fingered delicately the touch-holes of the very guns that had roared and
snapped so fiercely at the Dons; and they peered down into the dark empty
hold where the treasure-chests had lain, and up at the three masts and
the rigging that had borne so long the swift wings of the _Pelican_. And
they heard the hiss and rattle of the ropes as Hubert ordered a man to
run up a flag to show them how it was done; and they smelled the strange
tarry briny smell of a sea-going ship.
"You are not tired?" Anthony said to his sister, as they walked back to
the inn from which they were to see the spectacle.
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