Nicholas Gay stood on the wharf by his father's warehouse, and the fresh morning breeze that blew up from the Pool of the Thames was ruffling his bright hair. He could hear the seamen chanting at the windlass, and the shouts of the boatmen threading their skiffs and scows in and out among the crowded shipping. There were high-pooped Flemish freighters, built to hold all the cargo possible for a brief voyage; English coasting ships, lighter and quicker in the chop of the Channel waves; larger and more dignified London merchantmen, that had the best oak of the Weald in their bones and the pick of the Southdown wool to fill them full; Mediterranean galleys that shipped five times the crew and five times the cargo of a London ship; weather-beaten traders that had come over the North Sea with cargoes of salt fish; and many others. The scene was never twice the same, and the boy never tired of it. Coming into port with a cargo of spices and wine was a long Mediterranean galley with oars as well as sails, each oar pulled by a slave who kept time with his neighbor like a machine. The English made their bid for fortune with the sailing-ship, and even in the twelfth century, when their keels were rarely seen in any Eastern port, there was little of the rule of wind and sea short of Gibraltar that their captains did not know. Up Mart Lane, the steep little street from the wharves, Nicholas heard some one singing a familiar chantey, but not as the sailors sang it. He was a slender youth with a laugh in his eye, and he was singing to a guitar-like lute. He was piecing out the chantey and fitting words to it, and succeeding rather well. Nicholas stood by his father's warehouse, hands behind him and eyes on the ship just edging out to catch the tide, and listened to the song, his heart full of dreams. "Hey, there, youngster!" said the singer kindly as he reached the end of the strophe. "Have you a share in that ship that you watch her so sharply?" "No," said Nicholas gravely, "she's not one of father's ships. She's the _Heath Hen_ of Weymouth, and she's loaded with wool, surely, but she's for Bordeaux." "Bless the urchin, he might have been born on board!" The young man looked at Nicholas rather more attentively. "Your father has ships, then?" Nicholas nodded proudly. "The _Rose-in-June_, and the _Sainte Spirite_, and the _Thomasyn_,--she's named for mother,--and the _Sainte Genevieve_, because father was born in Paris, you know, and the _Saint Nicholas_,--that's named for me. But I'm not old enough to have a venture yet. Father says I shall some day."