lying at the
bottom of a boat which four seamen, who had rowed up to me and had broken
my head as I meditated, were pulling towards a merchant-vessel, or
carrick, in the Eden-mouth. Her sails were being set; the boat wherein I
lay was towing that into which I had leaped after striking down Melville.
For two of the ship's men, being on shore, had hailed their fellows in
the carrick, and they had taken vengeance upon me.

"You scholar lads must be taught better than your masters learn you,"
said my enemy.

And therewith they carried me on board the vessel, the "St. Margaret," of
Berwick, laden with a cargo of dried salmon from Eden-mouth. They meant
me no kindness, for there was an old feud between the scholars and the
sailors; but it seemed to me, in my foolishness, that now I was in luck's
way. I need not go back, with blood on my hands, to Pitcullo and my
father. I had money in my pouch, my mother's gold chain about my neck, a
ship's deck under my foot, and the seas before me. It was not hard for
me to bargain with the shipmaster for a passage to Berwick, whence I
might put myself aboard a vessel that traded to Bordeaux for wine from
that country. The sailors I made my friends at no great cost, for indeed
they were the conquerors, and could afford to show clemency, and hold me
to slight ransom as a prisoner of war.

So we lifted anchor, and sailed out of Eden-mouth, none of those on shore
knowing how I was aboard the carrick that slipped by the bishop's castle,
and so under the great towers of the minster and St. Rule's, forth to the
Northern Sea. Despite my broken head--which put it comfortably into my
mind that maybe Dickon's was no worse--I could have laughed to think how
clean I had vanished away from St. Andrews, as if the fairies had taken
me. Now having time to reason of it quietly, I picked up hope for
Dickon's life, remembering his head to be of the thickest. Then came
into my mind the many romances of chivalry which I had read, wherein the
young squire has to flee his country for a chance blow, as did Messire
Patroclus, in the Romance of Troy, who slew a man in anger over the game
of the chess, and many another knight, in the tales of Charlemagne and
his paladins. For ever it is thus the story opens, and my story,
methought, was beginning to-day like the rest.

Now, not to prove more wearisome than need be, and so vex those who read
this chronicle with much talk about myself, and such accidents