d with
stock-fish: but once we went south to your own city of Cadiz, and
returned with wines and a little spice purchased of a Levantine
merchant in the port. My last three voyages were taken in the _Mary
Radclyf_ or _Redcliffe_. One afternoon" [the year he could not
remember, but it may have been 1373 or 1374] "I was idle on the Quay
near Vyell's tower, when there comes to me Gervase Hankock, master,
and draws me aside, and says he: 'The vessel will be ready sooner than
you think,' and named the time--to wit, by the night next following.
Now I, knowing that she had yet not any cargo on board, thought him
out of his mind: but said he, 'It is a secret business, and double pay
for you if you are ready and hold your tongue between this and then.'

[Footnote A: Wick St. Lawrence on the Yeo, in Somerset.]

[Footnote B: Grandfather of the famous merchant, William Canynge.]

"So at the time he named I was ready with the most of our old crew,
and all wondering; with the ship but half ballasted as she came from
the Baltic and her rigging not seen to, but moored down between the
marshes at the opening of the River Avon.

"At ten o'clock then comes a whistle from the shore, and anon in a
shore-boat our master with a young man and woman well wrapped, and
presently cuts the light hawser we rode by; and so we dropped down
upon the tide and were out to sea by morning.

"All this time we knew nothing of our two passengers; nor until we
were past the Land's End did they come on deck. But when they did, it
was hand in hand and as lovers; the man a mere youngster, straight,
and gentle in feature and dress, but she the loveliest lady your
eyes ever looked upon. One of our company, Will Tamblyn, knew her at
once--as who would not that had once seen her?--and he cried out with
an oath that she was Mistress d'Arfet, but newly married to a rich
man a little to the north of Bristol. Afterwards, when Master Gervase
found that we knew so much, he made no difficulty to tell us more; as
that the name of her lover was Robert Machin or Macham, a youth of
good family, and that she it was who had hired the ship, being an
heiress in her own right.

"We held southward after clearing the land; with intent, as I suppose,
to make one of the Breton ports. But about six leagues from the French
coast a tempest overtook us from the north-east and drove us beyond
Channel, and lasted with fury for twelve days, all of which time we
ran before it, until on t