The Witch from the Sea Read Free

less like my father. It was amazing how I compared them all with him.
    “If we had entirely neglected trading,” Fennimore was saying, “we could never have beaten the Armada. We shouldn’t have had the ships.”
    “Traders!” cried my father. “Nothing to do with it. We beat the Dons because we were better seamen and we were determined not to let them set foot on our land.”
    “Yes, yes, Captain Pennlyon, that’s true of course. But we had to have the ships and by good fortune we had them.”
    “Now, young man, don’t you make the mistake of thinking this victory was due to luck. Good fortune, you say. Good seamanship, say I.”
    “It was that, but we did have the ships,” insisted Fennimore. “Did you know that in 1560 we had but seventy-one ships trading on the seas and in 1582 we’d increased that number to one hundred and fifty? Why, in 1560, sir, our merchant navy was almost nothing … we weren’t among the maritime nations. What were we doing? Our coastal trade was insignificant. We did a little with the Baltic ports—just with the Low Countries and perhaps a little with Spain, Portugal and France … a few Mediterranean calls. That will not be so any more. We, Captain, are going to be not one of the foremost trading nations in the world but the foremost. There’s coal to be carried … coal and fish. This has been done in the past, but now that we have driven the Spaniards off the seas we have to take advantage of it.”
    My father was listening now. Any method of worsting the Spaniards appealed to him.
    I found it fascinating to listen to Fennimore. It was obvious that he had studied the matter; he believed in it wholeheartedly. Carlos was inclined to support him, while waiting for the cue from my father, of course. Jacko watched with bright eyes so like his mother’s; if the family was going into trade he wanted to be in it too. Penn’s eyes never left our father’s face. And watching him there, his startling blue eyes fierce at the mention of Spaniards, I was never more conscious of his intolerance and there was a great yearning in me for him to like and approve of Fennimore Landor. I realized that Fennimore in his way was as determined as my father was in his; but while one was noisily vociferous the other achieved as much impact by his quiet insistence.
    I sat listening to his voice and it was as though he created before my eyes the fulfilment of a dream. He was going to make our country great—not through war which to my father had always seemed the way to do this, but through trade. To ply peacefully throughout the world practising legitimate trading would prove more profitable, Fennimore was implying, than riding the high seas armed with guns and cannon, boarding, robbing, fighting, killing—sometimes acquiring a prize of great worth and as often suffering loss as well as death.
    “The time has come,” he cried. “The troubles between the Low Countries and the Spaniards have crippled them both. What fools men are to kill when they might trade peaceably! At one time Antwerp was a centre of great wealth—one of the greatest in the world. The closing of the Schelde three years ago finished that. We have still to contend with Amsterdam. They’ll be our rivals for a while. That is good. Rivalry is necessary. It is the spur.”
    He leaned his elbows on the table and contemplated my father earnestly.
    “I prophesy that in the next decade we in this country will build a merchant fleet which will be the envy of the world. We have come through a great ordeal victorious. It is not for us now to gloat over our enemies but to go on to greatness. Our derision cannot hurt them—our trading ships will. We have to beat the argosies of Venice, the tartanes of Marseilles. God and our seamen have taken care of the galleys of Barcelona.”
    I clapped my hands together and then I flushed because everyone was looking at me.
    “Congratulations, Captain Landor,” I stammered. “I … was quite carried