"The more reason why every man should have remained to protect his home and do his duty by his neighbours," returned Whiddon. "Drake cannot well be in two places at once. What astonisheth me is, that you should all have come trooping back the instant you heard that Sir Francis had again taken up his residence in the town. Sure, 'tis a very high compliment to a man when his mere presence among us should inspire such confidence and allay such a general panic." "There goes her anchor!" cried Timothy Trollope. And as he spoke there was a splash of water at the ship's bow, followed by the familiar rumbling noise of her hempen cable as it tore through the hawse-pipe. Now that the vessel was close at hand it could be seen that she was very much battered by the storms and conflicts through which she had passed during her long voyaging in distant seas. The lower timbers of her hull were overgrown with barnacles and slimy green weeds. Above the water-line there were many shot-holes, patched up with raw hides, sheets of lead, or rough-hewn balks of wood; and in one place, abaft her main-chains, a cannon-ball could be seen deeply embedded in the stout oak. In place of her original mizzen-mast there was the trunk of a forest tree, with the bark still upon it; and the lateen yard was made of spliced bamboo. Her standing rigging was mended with strands of twisted cow-hide. She was a ship of about a hundred tons burden, built with a high castle at her poop and with bulging sides. Her bows were as round and blunt as the breasts of the noisy sea-birds that floated near her in the harbour, feeding on the garbage thrown from the fishing-boats. She had not long been at anchor when a boat was put off from her, and was rowed by two men towards the stone-built slip beside which Gilbert Oglander and Timothy Trollope were standing. The boat had four occupants in addition to the two seamen who pulled at the oars. They were a black-bearded, middle-aged man who sat on the stern gunwale, and who seemed by his frequent commands to the rowers to be in authority; a woman, who sat near him; a beardless youth, who was crouching down in the bottom of the boat; and an aged, white-haired man, with a brown sunburned face and a long silvery beard, who was bending forward over the prow as if in desperate eagerness to spring on shore. As the little craft came yet nearer, Timothy Trollope observed that the passengers seemed to be no less weary and tattered than the ship from which they had just come. The old man at the bow wore no clothing save a ragged canvas shirt and a pair of wide, ill-made trunks. One of the rowers had but a single sleeve to his jerkin, and his hair was long and matted. The woman wore a large black cloak, whose hood was drawn over her head, leaving visible no more of her than her thin olive-coloured face and her sparkling dark eyes. She paid scarcely any regard to what was passing, but sat like an image, gazing stonily before her.