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Rh a man who had been there, who had felt the danger, known the escape. Dickie held his breath.

"And so," the story ended, "the breath of the Lord went forth and the storm blew, and fell on the fleet of Spain, and scattered them; and they went down in our very waters, they and their arms and their treasure, their guns and their gunners, their mariners and their men-of-war. And the remnant was scattered and driven northward, and some were wrecked on the rocks, and some our ships met and dealt with, and some poor few made shift to get back across the sea, trailing home like wounded mallards, to tell the King their master what the Lord had done for England."

"How long ago was it, all this?" Dicky asked. If his memory served it was hundreds of years ago—three, five—he could not remember how many, but hundreds. Could this man, whose hair was only just touched with grey, be hundreds of years old?

"How long?—a matter of twenty years or thereabouts," said the ship-builder. "See, the pretty little ship; and thy very own, for I made it for thee."

It was indeed a pretty little ship, being a perfect model of an Elizabethan ship, built up high at bow and stern, "for," as Sebastian explained, "majesty and terror of the enemy, and with deck and orlop, waist and poop, hold and masts—all complete with forecastle and cabin, masts and spars, portholes and guns,