By the time that the two had got down to the level ground, and had passed through several of the quaint narrow streets leading towards the harbour, the strange ship had sailed far to the eastward of Mill Bay; her men were aloft furling the sails, and she was slowly drifting with the tide into the sheltered basin of Sutton Pool.
Some fishermen and seamen had gathered in groups upon the wharf to watch her as she came nearer, and to make conjectures as to what might be her name and whence she had come. Gilbert Oglander strode into their midst and stood awhile listening to their talk.
"'Tis a full three years since she sailed out of Plymouth Sound," said one of them.
"Ay, and the rest!" declared another. "Why, 'twas in the summer of 1586 that she went out--in the self-same month, if not the same week, that Thomas Cavendish sailed with his three ships to make the voyage round the world, and that, as I do reckon it, must be nigh upon four years and six months; though in truth it seemeth less. But the years do fly amazingly in these busy times!"
"Know you the name of this vessel that is now coming in, Master Whiddon?" asked Gilbert of a brown-faced mariner at his elbow.
"Ay, to be sure, Master Oglander," returned Whiddon. "We do make her out to be the _Pearl_--one of Sir Walter Raleigh's ships--that went out along with two others upon a voyage of adventure to the Brazil, or some such place. Master Will Marsden, of Plymouth, was her captain; an old playmate of mine own, and a right fortunate seamen in his younger days. Well do I mind how we all envied him when he set out on this same voyage. But alas! by the look of his ship at this moment, and the fact that he hath come home alone and unattended, I much doubt that he hath left the better part of his good fortune behind him. Ah, there be blackamoors aboard of her!"
"Ay," interposed another of the group, who by his apron and his turned-up sleeves was evidently an artisan and a landsman. "And at seaman's work too. A woeful sign, my masters! Where be all the brave men of Devon that set sail in her, I'd like to know? Down among the coral and the shrimps at the bottom of the sea, I suppose, or else toiling in Spanish galleys, imprisoned by the Inquisition, or lying dead with the crows a-picking of their bones out yonder in Panama. 'Tis ever so with these buccaneering cruises. I like them not, for they do ever end with disaster."