Timothy waited only to make certain further inquiries concerning the identity of the two men who had been taken to the gaol, and then set off on his way down to the village.
He went first to the widow Frampton's cottage, a clean little thatched dwelling, with the dry and faded stalks of honeysuckle about the trellised porch and a tiny garden in front. He asked for Jacob Hartop, and was told that the old man had wandered out to enjoy the fresh morning air. Timothy inquired which way he had gone, and was told that he would perhaps find him down beside the sign of the Champernoun Arms, as he had said before going out that he had a mind to have a gossip with some of the villagers over a pot of home-brewed ale.
Timothy made his way along the street past many whitewashed cottages, all curiously striped with cross beams of black oak, and looking very sweet and cosy with their thatched roofs and their smoking chimneys. A turn in the road brought him within a few yards of the village well. About a dozen curly-headed boys and girls stood round it, and in their midst, sitting on the stone parapet that encircled the fountain, was Jacob Hartop. He was easily known by the fact that he still wore Gilbert Oglander's cloak, with its badge of the Oglanders on the shoulder. The old man's back was towards Timothy, and the lad went quietly up behind him until he came within sound of his voice. Jacob was holding forth to his juvenile audience on the precious virtues of pure water, a cup of which liquid he held in his right hand, resting on his knee.
"Ay," he was saying as Timothy drew near, "I told ye but a little while ago of all the gold and precious stones that I possessed—enough and more in value, as I say, to buy up all Plymouth and Modbury. Well, I would, at times, willingly have given the whole of that treasure for one such little cup of water as this. Ah! 'tis a terrible thing to be dying of thirst, my boys, as many of our brave men were a-dying at that time aboard the Golden Galleon. 'Tis to be compared only with the tortures of the Inquisition. But there, bairns, methinks I have talked enough about myself and my ship. What would ye next—a song—a fairy tale?"
Timothy was about to break into the circle, but the voice of a yellow-haired little maid of some ten or eleven years old checked him.
"You did say you would tell us of Captain Drake," she said.
"Yes," chimed in a boy at her elbow, "thou didst say we should hear how it was that Sir Francis was crippled. I have oft wondered, when I have seen him going up to my lord's great house yonder, how it was that he came to walk lame."
Hartop laid his cup of water aside on the parapet of the well, and took the yellow-haired maid in his arms and perched her upon his knee. The other children gathered closer round him.
"You must know, then," he began, looking from one to the other of the rosy faces, "that our great enemies the Spaniards have long been famous for the vast wealth that they have gathered out yonder in the islands that we name the West Indies. Every year King Philip doth send out a fleet of his galleons to bring home to Spain their cargoes of silver and gold. 'Tis that same vast wealth that hath made him able to fit out his armadas and pay his armies of soldiers to fight against your fathers. Now Queen Elizabeth (God bless her!) hath ever been anxious to stop those treasures from crossing over to Spain, and she hath allowed Captain Drake and others of her great seamen, as well as such more humble buccaneers as myself, to rove the Spanish Main and capture such treasure-ships as came in their way, also to land their forces on the Spanish islands and strip King Philip's treasure-houses of the gold and silver therein stored."