‘Where did you know Sir Francis Drake?’ said Dan, not relishing being called a child.
‘At Rye Port, to be sure,’ said Simon, and seeing Dan’s bewilderment, repeated it.
‘Yes, but look here,’ said Dan. ‘Drake he was a Devon man. The song says so.’
‘“And ruled the Devon seas,"’ Una went on. ‘That’s what I was thinking—if you don’t mind.’
Simon Cheyneys seemed to mind very much indeed, for he swelled in silence while Puck laughed.
‘Hutt!’ he burst out at last, ‘I’ve heard that talk too. If you listen to them West Country folk, you’ll listen to a pack o’ lies. I believe Frankie was born somewhere out west among the Shires, but his father had to run for it when Frankie was a baby, because the neighbours was wishful to kill him, d’ye see? He run to Chatham, old Parson Drake did, an’ Frankie was brought up in a old hulks of a ship moored in the Medway river, same as it might ha’ been the Rother. Brought up at sea, you might say, before he could walk on land—nigh Chatham in Kent. And ain’t Kent back-door to Sussex? And don’t that make Frankie Sussex? O’ course it do. Devon man! Bah! Those West Country boats they’re always fishin’ in other folks’ water.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Dan. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘No call to be sorry. You’ve been misled. I met Frankie at Rye Port when my Uncle, that was the shipbuilder there, pushed me off his wharf-edge on to Frankie’s ship. Frankie had put in from Chatham with his rudder splutted, and a man’s arm—Moon’s that ’ud be—broken at the tiller. "Take this boy aboard an’ drown him,” says my Uncle, “and I’ll mend your rudder-piece for love."’
‘What did your Uncle want you drowned for?’ said Una.
‘That was only his fashion of say-so, same as Mus’ Robin. I’d a foolishness in my head that ships could be builded out of iron. Yes—iron ships! I’d made me a liddle toy one of iron plates beat out thin—and she floated a wonder! But my Uncle, bein’ a burgess of Rye, and a shipbuilder, he ’prenticed me to Frankie in the fetchin’ trade, to cure this foolishness.’