Page:Waylaid by Wireless - Balmer - 1909.djvu/124

Rh days, he saw no more either of Mrs. Varris and her daughter or of Mr. Dunneston. But late in August, as the travellers were working their ways slowly to the ports to take ship back to America, Preston found them all at Plymouth.

The very next morning after his arrival the Englishman entered the breakfast-room of his same hotel upon the Hoe.

To Americans, Plymouth is the place where the first Pilgrims put in with the Mayflower, and where they last prayed and provisioned before setting sail for the New England of the West. But to the English it had been the stronghold and the principal port of their southwest coast for hundreds of years before. They fortified it first in the fourteenth century; and the great, frowning citadel of 1670 still stands and covers the most prominent point on the shore. But the forts of to-day are not conspicuous. They girdle the harbor behind low, outlying banks, built to conceal the mighty, modern mortars and the great disappearing 104