As the two looked down at Philip Marsham, a score of old tales he had heard of worthless sailors who left the sea and went a-begging through the kingdom came to his mind. It was a manner of life he had never thought of for himself, nor had he a mind to it now. But he knew their game and, which was more, he knew that he held a higher trump than they. He leaned back and looked up at them and very calmly smiled.
"How now!" the spokesman blustered. "Dost laugh at a tale so sad as mine? I ha' killed an Italian fencing-master in my time. I ha' fought prizes at half the fairs in England."
His companion laid a hand on his arm and whispered in his ear.
"Nay," he retorted angrily, "'tis nought but a country fellow. I'll soon overbear him."
Again Phil smiled. "Hast thou never," he said in a quiet voice, "heard the man at the mainmast cry, 'A liar, a liar!' and for a week kept clean the beakhead and chains? Nay, I'll be bound thou hast sat in bilbowes or been hauled under the keel. The marshal doubtless knew thee well."
The faces of the two men changed. The fat man who had been the spokesman opened his mouth and was at loss for words, but the thin, dark man began to laugh and kept on laughing till he could hardly stand.
"We ha' reached for a pheasant and seized a hawk," he cried. "Whence came you, my gay young gallant, and what are you doing here?"
"Why, I am here to set myself up for a farmer. I had a reason for leaving London—"
Again the thin man burst out laughing. "Why, then," quoth he, "we are three men of like minds. So had Martin and I a reason for leaving London, too. And you are one who hath smelt salt water in your time. Nay, deny it not. Martin's sails are still a-flutter for wind, so sorely did you take him aback. 'Twas a shrewd thrust and it scored. Why, now, as for farming,"—he spread his hands and lifted his brows,—"come with us. There's a certain vessel to sail from Bideford on a certain day, and for any such tall lad as thou I'll warrant there'll be a berth."
Leaning back against a little hill, the lad looked from the red, impudent face of the fat man to the amused, lean, daring face of his companion and away at the hills and meadows, the green trees and ploughed fields, and the long brown road that would lead the man who followed its windings and turnings, however far afield they might wander, all the way across England from the Channel to the Severn. He had made port, once upon a time, in Bristol and he remembered lifting Lundy's Island through the fog. A fair countryside lay before him, with the faint scent of flowered meadows and the fragrance of blossoming fruit-trees on the wind, but the sea was his home and the half-witted creature with the book and the ranting talk of ploughing and planting had made the lad feel the more his ignorance of country matters, a suspicion of which had been growing on him since first he left the town and port behind him. These were not men he would have chosen, but he had known as bad and he was lost in a wilderness of roads and lanes and never-ending hills and meadows and woods, with villages one after another. Any port in a storm—any pilot who knew his bearings! And for the matter of that, he had seen rough company before. Though his grandparents were gentlefolk, his father had led a rough life and the son had learned from childhood to bear with low humour and harsh talk.