"Three hundred years odd," said Mr. Pepper meditatively at length.
As nobody said, "What?" he merely extracted a bottle and swallowed a
pill. The piece of information that died within him was to the effect
that three hundred years ago five Elizabethan barques had anchored where
the _Euphrosyne_ now floated. Half-drawn up upon the beach lay an equal
number of Spanish galleons, unmanned, for the country was still a virgin
land behind a veil. Slipping across the water, the English sailors
bore away bars of silver, bales of linen, timbers of cedar wood, golden
crucifixes knobbed with emeralds. When the Spaniards came down from
their drinking, a fight ensued, the two parties churning up the sand,
and driving each other into the surf. The Spaniards, bloated with fine
living upon the fruits of the miraculous land, fell in heaps; but the
hardy Englishmen, tawny with sea-voyaging, hairy for lack of razors,
with muscles like wire, fangs greedy for flesh, and fingers itching for
gold, despatched the wounded, drove the dying into the sea, and soon
reduced the natives to a state of superstitious wonderment. Here a
settlement was made; women were imported; children grew. All seemed to
favour the expansion of the British Empire, and had there been men
like Richard Dalloway in the time of Charles the First, the map would
undoubtedly be red where it is now an odious green.
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