Now run and play with Ludovico and Santo, Sebastiano mio,
and be glad thou art free of a pleasant garden."
But Sebastian still hung back, his dark head rubbing softly against his
father's shoulder. "When I am a great merchant," he announced, "the King
will let me send my ships all over the world."
John Cabot stroked the wavy dark hair with a lingering, tender touch.
"God grant thee thy wish, little one," he said. And Sebastian, with a
shout in answer to a call from the sunny out-of-door world, scampered
away.
John Cabot, who had been born in Genoa, married while a merchant in
Venice, and had now lived for many years in Bristol, felt sometimes that
the life of a trader was like that of a player at dice. And the dice
were often loaded.
He was a good navigator, or he would not have been a true son of the
Genoese house of Caboto--Giovanni Caboto translated meant John the
Captain, and in a city full of sea-captains a man must know more than a
little of the sea to win that title. He had made a place for himself in
Venice as Zuan Gaboto, and now he was a known and respected man in the
second greatest seaport of England, with a house in the quarter of
Bristol known as "Cathay," the only part of the city where foreigners
were allowed to live. It had its nickname from the fact that the foreign
trade of Bristol was largely with the Orient.
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