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days anchored under the lee of Lundy Island, where marauding Barbary pirates had raised ramparts in defiance of the King’s Majesty, before catching a slant of wind from the north-west, whereupon Captain Strange set course for the Mediterranean.
    The same day Henry Mainwaring, having previously waited upon His Majesty King James and presented his sovereign with his Discourse upon Pirates and their Suppression Thereof , was summoned to attend the King at Woking. Here he was knighted and appointed a Gentleman of the Bedchamber, whereupon the first person to offer his congratulations was George Villiers, the Marquess of Buckingham. The court favourite was eagerly seeking new allies among seafaring men, for his intrigues had recently secured the ousting of the Howards from the King’s favour. The Earl of Nottingham, once the victorious admiral who had turned aside the Spanish Armada, wrecked by age and corruption had given way to a younger man of subtle skills – considerable administrative ability but infinitely greater venality. Buckingham’s star was rising, for soon he would be a Duke and not merely the Lord Admiral as Nottingham had been, but Lord High Admiral of England.
    Far to the westward of these grand proceedings the Swallow lay over to the wind, her yards braced sharply, her sails full and the sea a-roiling along her lee tumblehome. Here, the boy Kit Faulkner, damp and unhappy, threw up the contents of his stomach and wished he was scavenging apples on the waterfront of Bristol.

Part One
    The King’s Whelp
    Whelp
The young of the dog. Now little used, superseded by puppy .
An ill-conditioned or low fellow; later, in milder use, and especially of a boy or young man. A saucy or impertinent young fellow; an ‘unlicked cub’, a ‘puppy’.
( Nautical ) One of the longitudinal projections on the barrel of a capstan or windlass [by which the nipper or anchor cable was more readily drawn round].
( Nautical ) One of a fleet of auxiliary war vessels established in Charles I’s reign, so-called because designed to attend on HMS Lion .
    Oxford English Dictionary

One
    Awaiting El Dorado
    Summer 1620 – Spring 1623
    It was to be many, many months before Kit Faulkner next encountered Sir Henry Mainwaring, four years during which he served Captain Strange, who in turn taught him the business of seamanship in accordance with the indenture Kit had marked with a curiously assured monogram. Although Strange had discovered this was almost the limit of the boy’s literacy, it was quickly apparent that Mainwaring’s instinct had proved correct: Faulkner was exceedingly quick on the uptake, a bright, intelligent adolescent who swiftly turned into a tough, sinewy youth for whom the crude victuals of the Swallow seemed like manna from heaven.
    The equinoctial outward passage of the Swallow had been rough and for three days the wretched Faulkner had repeatedly spewed-up his guts. Strange left him to his misery and the cuffings he received from the boatswain on the occasions when he failed to make the rail before voiding himself. Happily the decks were sluiced incessantly by green seas so that Faulkner was relieved of the humiliation of cleaning up his own vomit, but much of the time Strange observed his charge lying shivering in the lee scuppers, indifferent to the cold seawater that swirled about him, a bight of rope cast about him by the same boatswain who admonished him for fouling the decks. From time-to-time a pannikin of hot burgoo was offered to him by another of the able seamen and for most of the three days this act of solicitude was rejected by the lad. But on the fourth day out, after a veering of the wind produced a ray or two of sunshine which, with the southing they were making, combined to throw a patch of comparative warmth upon the Swallow sufficient to dry her damp decks, Strange observed Faulkner take the pannikin and spoon its contents into his mouth. Almost as he watched,