The men waited. The little boat came alongside and threw up a rope. ‘What’ve you got?’ Captain Gilbert shouted.

The two men on board simply shook their heads. They understood no English but they held up a basket of salted salmon. Sir Dudley groaned, ‘Not salmon again!’, but he held up two silver shillings for them to see.

They shook their heads and held up a spread hand.

‘They mean five,’ Tradescant remarked.

‘They can add then, even if they can’t speak a civilised language,’ the captain noted.

Sir Dudley reached into his purse and held out four silver shillings.

The men spoke briefly one to another and then nodded. Sir Dudley tossed the coins down into the boat and Tradescant caught the rope the sailors threw to him. He hauled in the basket of salmon and presented it to Sir Dudley.

‘Oh, wonderful,’ Sir Dudley said ungratefully. ‘I know, let’s have it with dry biscuit for a change.’

Tradescant grinned.

The rest of the voyage they hugged the coastline and watched the landscape change from the steady unyielding white of snow to a russet dry brown, and then slowly to a green.

‘Almost like England in a hard winter,’ Tradescant remarked to Captain Gilbert.

‘Nothing like,’ Gilbert said crossly. ‘Because half the year it’s under snow and half the year it’s under fog.’

Tradescant nodded and retreated to his vantage point at the bowsprit. Now there was more and more for him to see as the coastline unrolled before the rocking prow. On land John could see the people of the country, who startled him at first with their appearance of having no necks, but heads which grew directly from their shoulders.

‘It can’t be,’ he said stoutly to himself, and shaded his eyes from the sun to see better. As the people ran down to the beach, shouting and waving to the passing ship, and the ship drew a little closer to shore to avoid a mid-river sandbank, John could see that they were wearing thick cloaks of skins over their heads and shoulders, giving them the illusion of a hooded misshapen head.

‘God be praised,’ John said devoutly. ‘For a moment I thought we were among strange countries indeed, and that all the travellers’ tales I had heard were coming true.’

The people on the shore held up their bows and arrows and spread a deerskin for John to see. John waved back; the ship was too far out to make any bargaining a possibility, though he would dearly have loved to examine the bows and arrows.

The ship anchored at sunset, Captain Gilbert declaring that he was more afraid of sandbars in an unknown river than all the sailing he ever did across the North Sea.

‘Can I have the boat take me on shore?’ Tradescant asked.

The captain scowled. ‘Mr Tradescant, surely you can see all you need from here?’