Who was my prisoner but yesterday.

52.

‘Come hither to me, thou Gordon good,

And be thou ready at my call,

And I will give thee three hundred pound

If thou wilt let my beams down fall.’

53.

53.1 ‘swarved,’ swarmed, climbed.

53.3 ‘bearing arrow’: perhaps a light arrow for long-distance shooting, but see 56.3; and cf. Adam Bell, 150.3.

With that he swarved the mainmast tree,