By the time I was 13 years old, I realized that I was a remarkable lad. I had also been born near the end of the remarkable 16th century. In the 16th century two remarkable things had happened in the world, besides my being born.  

For the first time since Jesus Christ walked the roads in Jerusalem, the Catholic Church was not the only Christian Church. The Protestant faith had also been born. Now there were Protestant churches like my Church of England. There were Huguenot churches in France. Naturally the Catholic Church was upset about that. There were wars over it, and someone remarkable like myself was needed in them.

Also for the first time we knew for a fact there was a whole other half of the world. It had always been there, but we had just discovered it eight years before I was born.  Many wise men since the time of the ancient Greeks and Arabs had explained why it would be there. However, now we had seen it and, naturally, now everyone wanted to own it. So in my remarkable century, New World colonies were also born, although England was not doing much of a job at that. Someone remarkable like myself was needed.

That I should be so remarkable in itself is remarkable, for I was born to a very un-remarkable family who led very unremarkable lives. I was given an unremarkable name, John Smith. My family lived on a small farm in a most un-remarkable bit of England called Lincolnshire, -- some chalk hills, a bit of coast, some clay.

We rented our farmland from the Berties. In 1588, the very same year I was born, Peregrine Bertie became Lord Willoughby.   As a lord, I am sorry to say it but, truth be told, he was also un-remarkable. He did a bit of diplomacy in Denmark and a bit of fighting over in Flanders to help the Dutch Protestants.

He was made a general. People in Lincolnshire were impressed with that. They didn’t know that a man with a noble title didn’t need to do much to be promoted. When his first son was born, three years after me, our own Queen Elizabeth stood as his godmother. That, to me, was the most remarkable thing about the Berties.

Since my parents were unremarkable, naturally they saw nothing remarkable in me. They sent me off to a school run by my uncle. He was, I regret to report, also un-remarkable, so everything about his school was equally unremarkable. However, I did like to read. Books can paint a bright, broad horizon in a lad’s mind, even if his body is stuck in Lincolnshire. But to read, I didn’t need school, just books.

I did enjoy an occasional sermon of the good Reverend Fotherby. Now, those sermons were remarkable. Not for the religion – what he said about how Christians should act I already knew. But he had read books I could not read, books in Greek and Latin from ancient times, and he would quote from them. Those quotes from those ancient books were indeed remarkable for good sense and wisdom and words that made me think about life.  

The more I thought about life, the more I realized that a lad of my remarkable abilities needed a bigger world, like a flourishing plant needs a bigger pot. My roots needed a pot much larger than unremarkable Lincolnshire and my uncle’s unremarkable school in Louth. So, I decided to go to sea.  

I did not ask anyone’s advice. When you are remarkable, there is no point in asking advice from those who are unremarkable. Happily Louth was a market town. Where better to sell my books, my satchel, and all I had?  Then, just as I was about to slip off to sea, my father died.   

[John's mother re-marries, John goes to France as companion to Lord Willoughby's younger son, and finds himself alone and penniless, so decides to join the Army to fight the Catholica for Kind Henry IV.]

I signed up for King Henry’s French Army with no trouble at all. They seemed glad to have recruits. I knew almost nothing of weapons. But before the week was out there I was, in my jacket and doublet and boots, learning how real soldiers fired a pistol and a musket. Wielding a sword and a pike.   Oh, I would think as I hit target or made a good thrust of the sword, if the lads back home could see me now!

Lendava sits within a landscape of hills.   On those hills to the one side I would light three torches. Across the way, some seven miles distant, also atop a hill they would also have 3 torches. My torches would tell them the intelligence I had discovered. Their torches would tell me what action they would take based on that intelligence.

How could three torches standing in a row spell out a message? Easily. The first torch signified a letter from A through L. Five motions of showing the light and hiding it would mean 5 places from A, thus meaning “e.” Then the sender of the message would wait a bit so that the person receiving the message might write down the letter. A second torch would indicate, in like manner, the letters M through Z. The third torch would indicate the end of a word. It was an ingenious plan created by remarkable me. Later I drew a picture of myself sending intelligence by torch fire.