“But not today,” Newcomen said.

If this fifty-year-old blacksmith seemed strangely blunt and direct in the presence of an Earl, it was because he and that Earl had been working together for a year, building something. “The balance of the voyage was easier, I trust, Dr. Waterhouse?”

“When the weather lifted, those horrid rocks were in sight. As we sailed past them, we said a prayer for Sir Cloudesley Shovell and the two thousand soldiers who died there coming home from the Spanish front. And seeing men at work on the shore, we took turns peering through a perspective-glass, and saw them combing the strand with rakes.”

The Earl nodded knowingly at this and so Daniel turned towards Newcomen, who looked curious-though, come to think of it, he always looked curious when he was not in the middle of throwing up. “You see,” Daniel continued, “many a ship has gone down near the Isles of Scilly laden with Pieces of Eight, and sometimes a great tempest will cause the sea to vomit up silver onto dry land.”

The unfortunate choice of verb caused the blacksmith to flinch. The Earl stepped in with a little jest: “That’s the only silver that will find its way onto English soil as long as the Mint over-pays for gold.”

“I wish I had understood as much when I reached Plymouth!” Daniel said. “All I had in my purse was Pieces of Eight. Porters, drivers, innkeepers leapt after them like starving dogs-I fear I paid double or treble for everything at first.”

“What embarrassed you in Plymouth inns, may enrich you here, a few miles north,” said the Earl.

“It does not seem a propitious location,” Daniel said. “The poor folk who lived here could not even keep their roof off the floor.”

“No one lived here-this was what the Old Men call a jews-house. It means that there was a lode nearby,” said the Earl.

Newcomen added, “Over yonder by that little brook I saw the ruins of a trip-hammer, for crushing the shode.” Having got his pipe lit, he thrust his free hand into a pocket and pulled out a black stone about the size of a bun.