Yellow Man sat by the Wise
Iron, and Witta steered. At first I feared the great white-flowering
waves, but as I saw how wisely Witta led his ship among them I grew
bolder. Hugh liked it well from the first. My skill is not upon the water;
and rocks, and whirlpools such as we saw by the West Isles of France,
where an oar caught on a rock and broke, are much against my stomach. We
sailed South across a stormy sea, where by moonlight, between clouds, we
saw a Flanders ship roll clean over and sink. Again, though Hugh laboured
with Witta all night, I lay under the deck with the Talking Bird, and
cared not whether I lived or died. There is a sickness of the sea which,
for three days, is pure death! When we next saw land Witta said it was
Spain, and we stood out to sea. That coast was full of ships busy in the
Duke's war against the Moors, and we feared to be hanged by the Duke's men
or sold into slavery by the Moors. So we put into a small harbour which
Witta knew. At night men came down with loaded mules, and Witta exchanged
amber out of the North against little wedges of iron and packets of beads
in earthen pots. The pots he put under the decks, and the wedges of iron
he laid on the bottom of the ship after he had cast out the stones and
shingle which till then had been our ballast. Wine, too, he bought for
lumps of sweet-smelling grey amber--a little morsel no bigger than a
thumbnail purchased a cask of wine. But I speak like a merchant.'

'No, no! Tell us what you had to eat,' cried Dan.

'Meat dried in the sun, and dried fish and ground beans, Witta took in;
and corded frails of a certain sweet, soft fruit, which the Moors use,
which is like paste of figs, but with thin, long stones. Aha! Dates is the
name.

'"Now," said Witta, when the ship was loaded, "I counsel you strangers, to
pray to your gods, for from here on our road is No Man's road." He and his
men killed a black goat for sacrifice on the bows; and the Yellow Man
brought out a small, smiling image of dull-green glass and burned incense
before it. Hugh and I commended ourselves to God, and Saint Bartholomew,
and Our Lady of the Assumption, who was specially dear to my Lady. We were
not young, but I think no shame to say, when as we drove out of that
secret harbour at sunrise over a still sea, we two rejoiced and sang as
did the knights of old when they followed our great Duke to England. Yet
was our leader an heathen pirate; all our proud fleet but one galley