"Fever!" quoth Sir Richard, stabbing at the sluggish mist with bony fingers. "Ague, the flux—death! We must travel ever by the higher levels, Martin—and I a cripple!"
"Why, then," said I, "you shall have a staff to aid you on one side and my arm on t'other, and shall attempt no great distance until you grow stronger." So having found and cut a staff to serve him, we set off together upon our long and arduous pilgrimage.
By mid-afternoon we reached a place of rocks whence bubbled a small rill mighty pleasant to behold and vastly refreshing to our parched throats and bodies. Here, though the day was still young and we had come (as I judged) scarce six miles, I proposed to camp for the night, whereon Sir Richard must needs earnestly protest he could go further an I would, but finding me determined, he heaved a prodigious sigh and stretching himself in the cool shadow, lay there silent awhile, yet mighty content, as I could see.
"Martin," quoth he at last, "by my reckoning we have some hundred and fifty miles to go."
"But, sir, they will be less to-morrow!" said I, busied with my knife on certain branches I had cut.
"And but half a ship's biscuit to our sustenance, and that spoiled."
"Why, then, throw it away; I will get us better fare!" said I, for as we came along I had spied several of those great birds the which I knew to be very excellent eating.
"As how, my son?" he questioned.
"With bow and arrows." At this he sat up to watch me at work and very eager to aid me therein. "So you shall, sir," said I, and having tapered my bow-stave sufficiently, I showed him how to trim the shafts as smooth and true as possible with a cleft or notch at one end into which I set one of my rusty nails, binding it there with strips from my tattered shirt; in place of feathers I used a tuft of grass and behold! my arrow was complete, and though a poor thing to look at yet it would answer well enough, as I knew by experience. So we fell to our arrow-making, wherein I found Sir Richard very quick and skilful, as I told him, the which seemed to please him mightily.
"For," said he miserably, "I feel myself such a burden to thee, Martin, that anything I can do to lighten thy travail be to me great comfort."