Neltje, Piet and Hendrik, Dirck and Myntje too,--
Little Nick of Leyden sailed his wooden shoe.
"Quarter-deck and cabin--rig her fore-and-aft,"--
Thus he murmured wisely as he launched his craft.
"Cutlass, pike and musquetoun, howitzer and shot--
But our knives and mirrors and beads are worth the lot."
Room enough for cargo to last a year or two,
In the round amidships of a wooden shoe!
Bobbing on the waters of the Nieuwe Vlei
See the bantam galleot, short and broad and high.
Laden for the Indies, trading all the way,
Frank and shrewd and cautious, fiery in a fray,--
Sagamore and mandarin are all the same to you,
Little Nick of Leyden with your wooden shoe!
XVIII
THE FIRES THAT TALKED
All along the coast of Britain, from John o' Groat's to Beachey Head,
from Saint Michael's Mount to Cape Wrath, twinkled the bonfires on the
headlands. Henry Hudson, returning from a voyage among icebergs, guessed
at once what this chain of lights meant. The son of Mary Queen of Scots
had been crowned in London.[1]
Hudson's keen eyes were unusually grave and thoughtful as the _Muscovy
Duck_ sailed up to London Pool on the incoming tide. The sailors looked
even more sober, for most of them were English Protestants, with a few
Flemings, and John Williams the pilot was an Anabaptist.
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