'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-armour 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," cried the black galliard. "Le Diable t'emporte!" says Aylward. "A five, a four, and the main," shouted the big man, with a voice like the flap of a sail. Hark to them now, young sir, and say if I speak not sooth.'
As he spoke, there sounded high above the shriek of the gale and the straining of the timbers a gust of oaths with a roar of deep-chested mirth from the gamblers in the fore-castle.
'Can I be of avail?' asked Alleyne. 'Say the word and the thing is done, if two hands may do it.'
'Nay, nay, your head I can see is still totty, and i' faith little head would you have, had your bassinet not stood your friend. All that may be done is already carried out, for we
