drank liquor;
and now greedy after a hit of sweet trade! 'tis piteous like; but I
bring mun a hit whenever I come, and he looks for it. He's one of my own
flesh like, is old Martin. He sailed with my father Captain Will, when
they was both two little cracks aboard of a trawler; and my father
went up, and here I am--he didn't, and there he is. We'm up now, we
Hawkinses. We may be down again some day."

"Never, I trust," said Amyas.

"'Tain't no use trusting, young man: you go and do. I do hear too much
of that there from my lad. Let they ministers preach till they'm black
in the face, works is the trade!" with a nudge in Amyas's ribs. "Faith
can't save, nor charity nether. There, you tell with him, while I go
play bowls with Drake. He'll tell you a sight of stories. You ask him
about good King Hal, now, just--"

And off waddled the Port Admiral.

"You have seen good King Henry, then, father?" said Amyas, interested.

The old man's eyes lighted at once, and he stopped mumbling his sugar.

"Seed mun? Iss, I reckon. I was with Captain Will when he went to meet
the Frenchman there to Calais--at the Field, the Field--"

"The Field of the Cloth of Gold, gramfer," suggested the dame.

"That's it. Seed mun? Iss, fegs. Oh, he was a king! The face o' mun like
a rising sun, and the back o' mun so broad as that there" (and he held
out his palsied arms), "and the voice of mun! Oh, to hear mun swear if
he was merry, oh, 'tas royal!--Seed mun? Iss, fegs! And I've seed mun do
what few has; I've seed mun christle like any child."

"What--cry?" said Amyas. "I shouldn't have thought there was much cry in
him."

"You think what you like--"

"Gramfer, gramfer, don't you be rude, now--

"Let him go on," said Amyas.

"I seed mun christle; and, oh dear, how he did put hands on mun's face;
and 'Oh, my gentlemen,' says he, 'my gentlemen! Oh, my gallant men!'
Them was his very words."

"But when?"

"Why, Captain Will had just come to the Hard--that's to Portsmouth--to
speak with mun, and the barge Royal lay again the Hard--so; and our boot
alongside--so; and the king he standth as it might be there, above my
head, on the quay edge, and she come in near abreast of us, looking most
royal to behold, poor dear! and went to cast about. And Captain Will,
saith he, 'Them lower ports is cruel near the water;' for she had not
more than a sixteen inches to spare in the nether overloop, as I heard
after. And saith he, 'That won't do for g