time was pushing her nose past the spit of rock
hiding our creek from seaward. As she came by with both large sails
boomed out to starboard and sheets alternately sagging loose and
tautening with a jerk, I caught sight of two of her crew in the bows,
the one looking on while the other very deliberately unlashed the
anchor, and aft by the wheel a third man, whom I made out to be
Captain Pomery himself.

"_Gauntlet_ ahoy!" I shouted, standing on the thwart and making a
trumpet of my hands.

Captain Pomery turned, cast a glance towards us over his left
shoulder and lifted a hand. A moment later he called an order
forward, and the two men left the anchor and ran to haul in sheets.
Here was a plain invitation to pull alongside. I seized a paddle,
and was working the boat's nose round, to pursue, when another figure
showed above the _Gauntlet's_ bulwarks: a tall figure in an
orange-russet garment like a dressing-gown; a monk, to all
appearance, for the sun played on his tonsured scalp as he leaned
forward and watched our approach.

CHAPTER V.

THE SILENT MEN.

"Seamen, seamen, whence come ye?
_Pardonnez moy, je vous en prie_."
_Old Song_.

A monk he was too. A second and third look over my shoulder left me
no doubt of it. He gravely handed us a rope as we overtook the ketch
and ran alongside, and as gravely bowed when I leapt upon deck; but
he gave us no other welcome.

His russet gown reached almost to his feet, which were bare; and he
stood amid the strangest litter of a deck-cargo, consisting mainly--
or so at first glance it seemed to me--of pot-plants and rude
agricultural implements: spades, flails, forks, mattocks, picks,
hoes, dibbles, rakes, lashed in bundles; sieves, buckets, kegs, bins,
milk-pails, seed-hods, troughs, mangers, a wired dovecote, and a
score of hen-coops filled with poultry. Forward of the mainmast
stood a cart with shafts, upright and lashed to the mast, that the
headsails might work clear. The space between the masts was occupied
by enormous open hatchways through which came the lowing of oxen, and
through these, peering down into the hold, I saw the backs of cattle
and horses moving in its gloom, and the bodies of men stretched in
the straw at their feet.

So much of the _Gauntlet's_ hugger-mugger I managed to discern before
Captain Pomery left the helm and hurried forward to give us welcome
on board.

"Mornin', Squire Pros