There was something in his brow and glance not to be mistaken, and which men willingly call master; yet he did not seem, to have sprung of the born magnates of the earth.

He wore a heavy gold chain about his neck, and it might be observed that upon the light full sleeves of his slashed doublet the image of a small ship on a terrestrial globe was curiously and many times embroidered.
It was not the first time that he had visited the Netherlands.

Thirty years before the man had been apprentice on board a small lugger, which traded between the English coast and the ports of Zeeland.

Emerging in early boyhood from his parental mansion--an old boat, turned bottom upwards on a sandy down he had naturally taken to the sea, and his master, dying childless not long afterwards, bequeathed to him the lugger.

But in time his spirit, too much confined by coasting in the narrow seas, had taken a bolder flight.