"A truce to your belly, Ralph," Hugh broke in. "Take station beside me here at the foot of the poop-ladder. Messer Nicholas, bid your varlets spread out under the rail, and place those with bows on the forecastle."
When these dispositions were made, Hugh looked over-side to see the galley dashing towards them only a bowshot distant. Her decks, crammed with men, were absolutely quiet. Not an arrow or bolt heralded her advance. Every sail of the cog was drawing, but, propelled by her swinging oars, the galley overhauled the sailing ship almost as if she had been standing still. As the Saracen's bow came abreast of the stern-castle, Matteo stepped out on the cog's poop beside the helmsman, who crouched low in fear of the arrow-hail which he knew would first be aimed at him.
"Art prepared, Hugh?" Matteo called down.
Hugh waved his hand along the deck.
"You see," he returned. "And you?"
"The brew is in the cauldron."
Before Hugh could answer, the galley drew alongside some twenty ells away. Her oars churned the water into foam that splashed up to the oar-lock ports. Her decks were abristle with pointed Saracen helms and gleaming scimiters. In a cage atop of her one mast amidships three or four archers lurked. At a word of command shouted from her stern-castle, the oars were backed and her headway checked until she was travelling at the same pace as the cog.
Dark, ferocious faces stared across the narrow gap of water at the helpless merchantman, but not a hand was raised to hurl a spear or draw a bow. The silence was broken by a hail.
"Ho, Englishmen, is Messer Nicholas Dunning there?"
A swart, stocky figure stepped to the railing of the galley's stern-castle. It was Messer Bartolommeo Caraducci. He waited expectantly, but Messer Nicholas cowered abjectly behind a water-butt under the stairs to the fore-castle. It was Hugh forced him from cover.