How came you there ?' Decimus Saxon puffed at his pipe for a minute or more in silence, as one who is marshalling facts each in its due order.
'It came about in this wise,' he said at last.

'When John of Poland chased the Turk from the gates of Vienna, peace broke out in the Principalities, and many a wandering cavaliero like myself found his occupation gone.

There was no war waging save only some petty Italian skirmish, in which a soldier could scarce expect to reap either dollars or repute, so I wandered across the Continent, much cast down at the strange peace which prevailed in every quarter.

At last, however, on reaching the Lowlands, I chanced to hear that the _Providence_, owned and commanded by my two brothers, Nonus and Quartus, was about to start from Amsterdam for an adventure to the Guinea coast.

I proposed to them that I should join them, and was accordingly taken into partnership on condition that I paid one-third of the cost of the cargo.