gs, of the wise, the polished and the sainted.
There it lay, so still and gray beneath the drifting wrack--the home of
things noble and of things shameful--the theatre where a new name
might be made or an old one marred. From his bosom to his lips came the
crumpled veil, and he breathed a vow that if valor and goodwill could
raise him to his lady's side, then death alone should hold him back from
her. His thoughts were still in the woods of Minstead and the old armory
of Twynham Castle, when the hoarse voice of the master-shipman brought
them back once more to the Bay of Biscay.

"By my troth, young sir," he said, "you are as long in the face as the
devil at a christening, and I cannot marvel at it, for I have sailed
these waters since I was as high as this whinyard, and yet I never saw
more sure promise of an evil night."

"Nay, I had other things upon my mind," the squire answered.

"And so has every man," cried Hawtayne in an injured voice. "Let the
shipman see to it. It is the master-shipman's affair. Put it all upon
good Master Hawtayne! Never had I so much care since first I blew
trumpet and showed cartel at the west gate of Southampton."

"What is amiss then?" asked Alleyne, for the man's words were as gusty
as the weather.

"Amiss, quotha? Here am I with but half my mariners, and a hole in the
ship where that twenty-devil stone struck us big enough to fit the fat
widow of Northam through. It is well enough on this tack, but I would
have you tell me what I am to do on the other. We are like to have
salt water upon us until we be found pickled like the herrings in an
Easterling's barrels."

"What says Sir Nigel to it?"

"He is below pricking out the coat-armor of his mother's uncle. 'Pester
me not with such small matters!' was all that I could get from him. Then
there is Sir Oliver. 'Fry them in oil with a dressing of Gascony,' quoth
he, and then swore at me because I had not been the cook. 'Walawa,'
thought I, 'mad master, sober man'--so away forward to the archers.
Harrow and alas! but they were worse than the others."

"Would they not help you then?"

"Nay, they sat tway and tway at a board, him that they call Aylward
and the great red-headed man who snapped the Norman's arm-bone, and the
black man from Norwich, and a score of others, rattling their dice in
an archer's gauntlet for want of a box. 'The ship can scarce last much
longer, my masters,' quoth I. 'That is your business, old swine's-head,'
c