“Greeting, my lord,” said he, “but I’d have been pleased to see you earlier. We’ve small enough force and slow enough heels in this vessel, and it’s my idea that the sooner we’re away from here and beyond range of pursuit, the safer it will be for my woman and brats who are in that hutch of an after-castle. It’s long enough since I sailed in such a small old-fashioned ship as this. She’s no machines, and she’s not even a steering mannikin. Look at the meanness of her furniture and (in your ear) I’ve suspicions that there’s rottenness in her bottom. But she’s the best I’d the means to buy, and if she reaches the place at the farther end I’ve got my eye on, we shall have to make a home there, or be content to die, for she’ll never have strength to carry us farther or back. She’s been a ship in the Egypt trade, and you know what that is for getting worm and rot in the wood.”
“You’d enough hands for your scheme before I came?”
“Oh yes. I’ve fifty stout lads and eight women packed in the ship somehow, and trouble enough I’ve had to get them away from the city. That thief of a port-captain wellnigh skinned us clean before he could see it lawful that so many useful fighting men might go out of harbour. Times are not what they were, I tell you, and the sea trade’s about done. All sailor men of any skill have taken a woman or two and gone out in companies to try their fortunes in other lands. Why, I’d trouble enough to get half a score to help me work this ship. All my balance are just landsmen raw and simple, and if I land half of them alive at the other end, we shall be doing well.”
“Still with luck and a few good winds it should not take long to get across to Europe.”
Tob slapped his leg. “No savage Europe for me, my lord. Now, see the advantage of being a mariner. I found once some islands to the north of Europe, separated from the main by a strait, which I called the Tin Islands, seeing that tin ore litters many of the beaches. I was driven there by storm, and said no word of the find when I got back, and here you see it comes in useful. There’s no one in all Atlantis but me knows of those Tin Islands to-day, and we’ll go and fight honestly for our ground, and build a town and a kingdom on it.”