The Pestle and Mortar stood facing the busy wharf at the corner of one of the narrow alleys that led up into the town. The upper windows of the house looked out across the Pool, where all the ships and fishing-boats were harboured. From these upper windows you could, if you had only been there, see down upon the ships' decks and watch the brown-faced seamen at their work of discharging the merchandise that they had brought from distant climes; and in the street below there was the channel where, on wet days, the rain-water rushed by in a deep stream; and where, when the rain had ceased, young Timothy Trollope and his playmates used to go out in their bare feet and sail their tiny boats, and imagine these bits of rough-hewn stick to be Spanish galleons, laden with gold, or corsair galleys with cargoes of Christian captives for the slave-markets of Algiers.
Timothy's games had always some connection with ships (which, I suppose, was natural enough, seeing that he had been born and brought up in sight of the sea, and with the smell of tar rope and bilge-water for ever in his nostrils), and all his boyish ambitions were of travel and adventure, fostered, it may be, by the travellers' talk he had heard from the mariners who gossiped with his father in the barber's shop.
Many of these adventurous mariners, remembering past benefits that they had received at the hands of the kindly barber-surgeon, or perhaps being short of money (as they ofttimes were, in spite of the vast treasures that they had voyaged and fought for in far-off regions), had given or sold to him many relics of their travels in foreign lands, and the shop was a veritable museum of curiosities from all parts of the known world. Here was a live poll-parrot brought home by one of Sir Richard Grenville's seamen from Virginia; the jaws of a giant shark that had been killed by John Hawkins' boatswain off the west coast of Africa; a Turk's scimitar, a Patagonian's war-club, a red Indian's tobacco-pipe, an Icelander's harpoon, and even some of the so-called gold brought back by Sir Martin Frobisher from distant Greenland. People who had never crossed the seas regarded these things with wonder and reverence, but seamen were wont to scoff at them, and to declare that they were but the sweepings and refuse of ships' cabins. Peter Trollope, however, was proud of his curious collection; and often, when business was slack, he would sit in his chair by the fire and look at the things each in turn, and grumble that Providence had not made him an adventurer instead of a quiet, stay-at-home barber-surgeon.
Master Thomas Cavendish, the great explorer, when he was fitting out his ship, the Hugh Gallant, for his voyage round the world, had once said to him:
"Peter, thou art too good a man to be wasting thy palmiest days at the clipping of hair. Those strong big limbs of thine should rather be employed in the hauling of ropes, the shifting of heavy guns, or fighting against the Spaniards. Now, my ship will be a-sailing out of Plymouth Sound in a few days' time, wilt shut up shop and join us? I do faithfully promise that thou shalt come back home again at the end of two brief years a wealthier man than ever the use of such trifling instruments as scissors and curling-irons can make thee."
But Peter was already a married man, with a growing family of boys to keep and to clothe and to send out upon the world, and he chose the certainty of an easy livelihood rather than the promise of riches which were to be gained, if at all, by deserting his home and leaving his wife and children to shift for themselves. He had reflected, too, that if there were Spaniards to be fought abroad, there was also a threatened danger from the same dread enemy at home in England, and that Queen Elizabeth had as great need for landsmen to defend her coasts as for mariners to extend her power beyond the seas. And, indeed, when that danger arrived (as it did in the year 1588, when Timothy was a boy of twelve years old) Peter proved himself ready and willing to fight for his country, albeit the sum of his work on that glorious occasion was no more than to help to light the bonfire on Plymouth Hoe—the first of those beacon-fires which flashed along the coast to warn all England of the coming of King Philip's great armada.
The memorable rout of the Spanish ships had taken place just two years before the opening of my story, and Timothy Trollope was now a well-grown lad of fourteen. He could remember all the events of the chase up the Channel, for he had heard the story repeated many times by men who had fought upon the Queen's ships. He was reminded of them every day; and even this morning as he strode through the town with his bag over his shoulders on his way to Modbury, he saw a group of the Spanish prisoners of war standing in the market-place—dark-visaged, evil-looking men, who seemed to be for ever plotting and scheming how they might escape from England and get back to their own orange groves in sunny Seville.
Tim hated the Spaniards (as I suppose all English boys hated them at that time), and he was careful to pass the señors at a very safe distance, believing that there was danger in being close to them, and that under their long black cloaks each of them carried a rapier or a stiletto ready to his hand, to draw upon any unwary person who should happen to betray by look or sign the enmity that was in the hearts of all the townsfolk, young and old. For although the prisoners were out on their parole and were strictly forbidden to carry arms, yet Timothy always secretly mistrusted them, and suspected them, not without reason, of carrying weapons which they were only too ready to use.
It was a long walk from Plymouth to Modbury Park; but the morning was fine, and Timothy, having left the town behind, tramped merrily along the shady country lanes, slashing with his stick at the rank weeds that grew at the wayside, and fancying that each nettle and foxglove that he laid low was a proud Spaniard whom he had slain.
As he crossed the fields by a footpath leading towards Beddington Dingle, a covey of partridges, alarmed at his approach, rose with a noisy whirr of wings from the stubble. In the woods of the dingle he watched a squirrel running along the high branch of an oak-tree, and in a ditch at the farther border of the wood he startled a rat, and loitered there for a long, long time trying to discover the hole into which the animal had escaped.