This gentleman, it is true, had not wandered, fought, and companioned with romance in America, but he had done so everywhere else.
He had as yet no experience with Indians, but he could conceive that rough experiences were rough experiences, whether in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America.

And as he knew there was a family likeness among dangerous happenings, so also he found one among remedies, and he had a bag full of stories of strange happenings and how they should be met.
They were going the old, long West Indies sea road.

There was time enough for talking, wondering, considering the past, fantastically building up the future.

Meeting in the ships' cabins over ale tankards, pacing up and down the small high-raised poop-decks, leaning idle over the side, watching the swirling dark-blue waters or the stars of night, lying idle upon the deck, propped by the mast while the trade-winds blew and up beyond sail and rigging curved the sky--they had time enough indeed to plan for marvels! If they could have seen ahead, what pictures of things to come they might have beheld rising, falling, melting one into another! Certain of the men upon the Susan Constant, the Goodspeed, and the Discovery stand out clearly, etched against the sky.
Christopher Newport might be forty years old.

He had been of Raleigh's captains and was chosen, a very young man, to bring to England from the Indies the captured great carrack, Madre de Dios, laden with fabulous treasure.