CHAPTER I

TWO YOUNG PEOPLE, A SHIP, AND A FISH


The month was September and the place was in the neighbourhood of
Bridgetown, in the island of Barbadoes. The seventeenth century was not
seventeen years old, but the girl who walked slowly down to the river
bank was three years its senior. She carried a fishing-rod and line, and
her name was Kate Bonnet. She was a bright-faced, quick-moving young
person, and apparently did not expect to catch many fish, for she had no
basket in which to carry away her finny prizes. Nor, apparently, did she
have any bait, except that which was upon her hook and which had been
affixed there by one of the servants at her home, not far away. In fact,
Mistress Kate was too nicely dressed and her gloves were too clean to
have much to do with fish or bait, but she seated herself on a little
rock in a shady spot not far from the water and threw forth her line.
Then she gazed about her; a little up the river and a good deal down the
river.

It was truly a pleasant scene which lay before her eyes. Not half a mile
away was the bridge which gave this English settlement its name, and
beyond the river were woods and cultivated fields, with here and there a
little bit of smoke, for it was growing late in the afternoon, when
smoke meant supper. Beyond all this the land rose from the lower ground
near the river and the sea, in terrace after terrace, until the upper
stretches of its woodlands showed clear against the evening sky.