There was a day, long back, when the Unicorn was new and the floors were laid down smelling of freshly adzed oak and sweat, rather than stale beer, smoke and fetid urine. A place was born then, into times that called for a cheap alehouse to spring into being, to turn shillings on wiry seamen in the hour of England's blazing birth.

Strange times, they were -- reason was rising in the house of Commerce, new continents had appeared for the bold to savor, the sextant was highest of technologies, and the national spirit was straight out of the foc's'le head. The rawest edges of life were always near, but the notions of popular luxury were crystallizing like forms in fog; the brotherhood of humankind was looming as a remote notion of possible value.

Magic flowers of an unleashed language singing were everywhere, they bloomed in the very alleys, and there was a sense of nation, of tribal hugeness that has survived unto this hour. Every month saw new timbers rising by the Mother river, new docks and vessels to tie to them, small and huge, appearing as miracles of plain tar, plain fir, plain rope, oak, hemp and salt tack suddenly combined in an overwhelming burst of organized magic, sent down the splintering rollers to the Thames in towering, mystic, nautical visions of power and of hope.

And, too, there was madness, both in ones and in gangs, the madness of churches, lost women, and terrified soldiers, and the far-flung madness of the displaced. This, too, spread wildly and drove men many times to sea in a search for reason; and often, accompanied them there.

In such a search, accompanied by such madness, does this tale begin....