CHAPTER XXIV.
PETER TROLLOPE SHUTS UP SHOP.
ON a certain gray, windy morning in late October, Peter Trollope's shop was more than usually busy. Every bench had its occupant, and the talk was loud and animated. In the big chair near the fire sat that great courtier Sir Walter Raleigh, smoking a stick of twisted tobacco, to which he gave the Spanish name of cigarro. He joined not much in the gossip, for he had already recounted all that was so far known concerning the last fight of the Revenge, news of which had come to England some few days earlier, and he was passing doleful in spirit over the death of his noble kinsman, Sir Richard Grenville. Now and again he did indeed put in a word when it was question of deciding the number of Spanish galleons that had been vanquished in the fight, or the number of Spaniards that had been slain, but for the most part he was gloomily silent.
"My brother Tom was aboard of her, and I'll engage that he gave not up his life ere he had laid a good dozen of the Dons low," said a burly fisherman from one of the corners of the shop.
"Ay," added another man, "and my son Bill was among 'em; likewise my good wife's brother Dick."
Peter Trollope snipped his scissors over the head of the young gallant whose hair he was trimming.
"My boy Timothy went also out with the fleet," said he; "though 'twas not on one of Her Majesty's ships that he sailed, but aboard Jacob Whiddon's Pilgrim, of which there hath been no word."
"She was seen taking some part in the battle," remarked Sir Walter Raleigh, puffing a cloud of blue smoke in a column above his head, "for since Whiddon was but an adventurer and owed no duty of obedience to my Lord Thomas, he was free to do what he listed. And he listed to have a shot at the galleons, and so, for aught I know, came to grief."