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Chapter IV |
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ROUND ABOUT RYE
It was in the red-roofed town of Rye that Simon Cheyneys, the shipbuilder (" Simple Simon") met Frankie Drake. At that time Drake was in the fetching trade between the persecuted Low Countries and England, and had put in at Rye from Chatham with his rudder splutted.
" Take this boy aboard and drown him," said Simon's uncle, " and I'll mend your rudder piece for love."
Simon relates how he served as a ship's boy with Drake, and was injured in a skirmish with a " gor-bellied Spanisher " and how he became a shipbuilder and burgess of Rye Port. We are also introduced to Simon's aunt, a notable woman, who was of Whitgift blood, and was the chosen one to see furthest through millstones. Drake beazled the life out of Simon's aunt, till she looked in his hand and told his fortune :
" You'll do a many things, and eating and drinking with a dead man beyond the world's end will be the
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