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-armor 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.
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