Two years more had passed, and still we had not found the plate. Very disheartened were we all by now, you may be sure, perhaps the one who kept himself best being the captain, who still hearkened after the astrologer's prophecy. Yet this, while still he did so, he chided himself for, saying that it became not a Puritan of New England to believe in any such things. "For," says he, "in my colony they are now burning witches and wizards, geomancers, astrologers, and those which pretend to be Cabala with the stars, to say nought of quack-salvers and saltim-bancoes, so that I am but a degenerate son. Yet not of my mother neither; for she, as I have told you, Nick"--as now he called me--"bought an astrologer's pricked paper and found it come true. Still, wrong as I do, I cannot but think the caster was right. Then, if so, must we wait another year; for by that time I shall have arrived at my thirty-seventh." That he would have waited had not the King--but you shall hear. We had now arrived, as I have said, at our fourth year out, and at this time Phips, who had one moment, as I have also writ, the idea of staying until his thirty-seventh year, and at another the mind to take the frigate home and confess to the King that he had failed, decided to have the ship's bottom cleaned, or, as 'tis called, breamed. Therefore, for this purpose we moved her somewhat away from the "Boylers" to a little island, of which there is a multitude hereabout--for we would not go to the mainland for fear of a broil with the Spaniards--and there careened her. Now, a sweet little isle this was as any one might wish to see--though very small, and on the charts tho' not the maps,--all covered over with a small forest in which grew the palm, the juniper, the caramite and acajou, as well as good fruits, such as limes, toronias, citrons, and lemons. Also, too, there were here good streams of fair fresh water all running about, at which one might stoop to lave themselves or to drink their fill. Ofttimes we had been over there before, especially to fetch in our boats the fresh water and the limes, for since our tubs of beer[2] had long since run dry this was our only beverage. Moreover, here we came in boats when we took our spells of leave, and, lying down in the little forest, would try to forget the tropic heat of where we had now been stationed so long, and would send our minds shooting back to memories of cool English lanes all shotted with the sweet May and the Eglantine, of our dear grey skies and our pleasant wealds.