"Surely," agreed Stephen Hopkins. "The savages build no vessels like ours, as you well know. Thank you, my boy, for warning me of her approach. Go on and spread your news broadcast; let our entire community be out to welcome whatever good the ship brings, or to resist harm--though that I fear not. I will myself be at the wharf when she gets in." "Oh, as to that, Mr. Hopkins, you have time to eat as big a breakfast as you can get and still be too early for the arrival," said Francis, grinning. "She's got a long way to cover and a deal to do to reach Plymouth wharf in this still air. She's not close in, by much. I hurried and yelled to get you up quick because--well, because you've got to hurry folks and yell when a ship comes in, haven't you?" Mr. Hopkins smiled sympathetically at the boy whose actions rarely got sympathy. "Till ships become a more common sight in our harbour, Francis, I would advise letting your excitement on the coming of one have vent a-plenty," he said, turning to reenter the house as Francis Billington, acting on advice more promptly than was his wont, ran down Leyden Street, throwing up his cap and shouting: "A ship! A sail! A ship! A sail!" at the top of his vigorous lungs, not only unreproved for his disturbance of the peaceful morning, but hailed with answering excitement by the men, women, and children whom he aroused as he ran. The ship took as long to reach haven as Francis Billington had prophesied she would require. She proved to be a small ship with a figure-head of a woman, meant to represent Fortune, for she was blindfolded, but her battered paint indicated that she had in her own person encountered ill-fortune in her course. A number of people were gathered on her forward deck, looking eagerly for indications of the sort of place that they were approaching. "Mr. Weston, knowing that we depend upon him and his brother merchants, our friends across seas, for supplies, hath at last dispatched us the long-waited ship," said Mr. Winslow to Mr. Hopkins. "With someone, let us hope, authorized to carry back report of us here, and thus to get us, later on, what we sore need. Many new colonists, as well as nearly all things that human beings require for existence," said Stephen Hopkins, with something of the strain upon his endurance that he had suffered getting into his voice. The ship was the _Fortune_--her figure-head had announced as much. When she made anchor, and her small boat came to the wharf, the first person to step ashore was Mr. Robert Cushman, the English agent who had played so large a part in the embarkation of the pilgrims in the _Mayflower_. "Welcome, in all truth!" said Governor Bradford stepping forward to seize the hand of this man, from whose coming and subsequent reports at home so much might be hoped. "Now, at last, have we what we have so long needed, a representative who can speak of us as one who hath seen!"