CHAPTER THE SECOND
MARTIN AT HOME
And who was Mr. Slocum?
Martin was the only son of a master mariner who, retiring after many years at sea, had settled in a little house near the Tower. He had suffered many misfortunes. Ship after ship in which he had invested his savings was lost, and the last of them, the Merry Maid, sailing from Bristol in the year ’62, had never been heard of again.
“Have you seen or heard aught of the Merry Maid?” was the question the old captain had put to all seafaring men coming into the river.
The answer was always the same. Martin often wondered what had become of the vessel. Many a time he wished that he could go sailing over the seas to try to find some trace of her. But when his father and mother both died of the Plague, he felt bound to stay on shore and help to look after his little sister Lucy.
They were left almost destitute, having nothing except the small sum that was realised by the sale of Captain Leake’s furniture. This was in the hands of a lawyer, and as it would bring in only a few shillings a week, it was clear that Martin would have to earn something.
He was taken from St. Paul’s school, and the lawyer found him a job in the shop of Mr. Greatorex, a wealthy goldsmith in Cheapside, who had known his father, and indeed had had an interest in the Merry Maid.
“I’ll give the lad a trial,” Mr. Greatorex had said when the lawyer approached him. “He’ll not get on very far unless he is apprenticed, of course; but I’m not inclined to take him as an apprentice without a premium; at any rate, until I find out the kind of lad he is. I’ve lost hundreds of pounds in that unlucky vessel. Let him come and do odd jobs for a while. Mr. Slocum will tell me how he gets on.”
Martin had never seen Mr. Greatorex himself. Unlike most of the city merchants of that day, who lived over their shops, the goldsmith had built himself a house in the country, and left his business almost entirely to Mr. Slocum, his manager.