"She goeth to fetch cod from Newfoundland." The old woman saw him hesitate. "A barren voyage, think'st thou? Nay, 'twere well for one of the gentlemen to look into that trade. Who knows?"
"True, old mother witch, who knows?" Martin tapped the table. "Can'st arrange it?"
"Nay. But I can start the wedge."
"We'll go," said Martin at last. "But now for bed. We've been a weary while on the road."
It was a great bed in a small room under the thatch; and as they lay there on the good goose-feathers in the dark, Martin said, "We'll sail in this Rose of Devon, lad."
Phil, already nearly asleep, stirred and roused up. "Any port in a storm," he mumbled. Then, becoming wider awake, he asked, "What is all this talk of 'the gentlemen' and who, prithee, is the Old One?"
"Ah, a natural question." Though the room was dark as Egypt, Phil knew by Martin's voice—for he could recognize every inflection and change in tone—that the sly, crafty look was creeping over his fat, red face. "Well," Martin continued after a moment of silence, "by 'the gentlemen' she means a few seafaring men that keep company together by custom and stop here when ashore—all fine, honest fellows as a man may be proud to know. I have hopes that some day you'll be one of us, Phil my lad, and some day I'll tell you more. As for the Old One, it very curiously happens that you have met with him. Do you recall to mind the thin man I quarrelled with, that first day?"
"Yea."
"That is the Old One, and Tom Jordan is his proper name."
It was Martin, after all, who fell asleep first, for Phil lay in the great bed in the small room, thinking of all that had happened since the day he fled from Moll Stevens's alehouse. There was Colin Samson, whose dirk he wore; there was the wild-eyed, black-haired man with the great book and the woeful tale; there were Martin, and Tom Jordan, "the Old One"; there were the inn and the old lady and gentleman—it all seemed so utterly unreal!—and Nell Entick, and Sir John Bristol. He fell asleep thinking of Nell and Sir John and dreamed of marrying Nell and keeping a tavern, to which the bluff old knight came in the guise of a very aged gentleman from Little Grimsby with a coachman who went poaching pheasants in the tavern yard.