‘That was what I was gettin’ at,’ said Simon, ‘but you’re so desperate quick. My Aunt she knew what was comin’ to people. My Uncle being a burgess of Rye, he counted all such things odious, and my Aunt she couldn’t be got to practise her gifts hardly at all, because it hurted her head for a week after-wards; but when Frankie heard she had ‘em, he was all for nothin’ till she foretold on him--till she looked in his hand to tell his fortune, d’ye see? One time we was at Rye she come aboard with my other shirt and some apples, and he fair beazled the life out of her about it. ‘“Oh, you’ll be twice wed, and die childless,” she says, and pushes his hand away. ‘“That’s the woman’s part,” he says. “What’ll come to me-to me?” an’ he thrusts it back under her nose. ‘“Gold--gold, past belief or counting,” she says. “Let go o’ me, lad.” ‘“Sink the gold!” he says. “What’ll I do, mother?” He coaxed her like no woman could well withstand. I’ve seen him with ‘em--even when they were sea-sick. ‘“If you will have it,” she says at last, “you shall have it. You’ll do a many things, and eating and drinking with a dead man beyond the world’s end will be the least of them. For you’ll open a road from the East unto the West, and back again, and you’ll bury your heart with your best friend by that road-side, and the road you open none shall shut so long as you’re let lie quiet in your grave.” [The old lady’s prophecy is in a fair way to come true, for now the Panama Canal is finished, one end of it opens into the very bay where Sir Francis Drake was buried. So ships are taken through the Canal, and the road round Cape Horn which Sir Francis opened is very little used.] ‘“And if I’m not?” he says. ‘“Why, then,” she says, “Sim’s iron ships will be sailing on dry land. Now ha’ done with this foolishness. Where’s Sim’s shirt?” ‘He couldn’t fetch no more out of her, and when we come up from the cabin, he stood mazed-like by the tiller, playing with a apple. ‘“My Sorrow!” says my Aunt; “d’ye see that? The great world lying in his hand, liddle and round like a apple.” ‘“Why, ‘tis one you gived him,” I says. ‘“To be sure,” she says. “‘Tis just a apple,” and she went ashore with her hand to her head. It always hurted her to show her gifts. Him and me puzzled over that talk plenty. It sticked in his mind quite extravagant. The very next time we slipped out for some fetchin’ trade, we met Mus’ Stenning’s boat over by Calais sands; and he warned us that the Spanishers had shut down all their Dutch ports against us English, and their galliwopses was out picking up our boats like flies off hogs’ backs. Mus’ Stenning he runs for Shoreham, but Frankie held on a piece, knowin’ that Mus Stenning was jealous of our good trade. Over by Dunkirk a great gor-bellied Spanisher, with the Cross on his sails, came rampin’ at us. We left him. We left him all they bare seas to conquest in.