WILSON'S
TALES OF THE BORDERS
AND OF SCOTLAND.
THOMAS OF CHARTRES.
One morning, early in the spring of 1298, a small Scottish vessel lay becalmed in the middle of the Irish Channel, about fifteen leagues to the south of the Isle of Man. During the whole of the previous night, she had been borne steadily southward, by a light breeze from off the fast receding island; but it had sunk as the sun rose, and she was now heaving slowly to the swell, which still continued to roll onward, in long glassy ridges from the north. A thick fog had risen as the wind fell—one of those low sea fogs which, leaving the central heavens comparatively clear, hangs its dense, impervious volumes around the horizon; and the little vessel lay as if imprisoned within a circular wall of darkness, while the sun, reddened by the haze, looked down cheerily upon her from above. She was a small and very rude-looking vessel, furnished with two lug-sails of dark brown, much in the manner of a modern Dutch lugger; with a poop and forecastle singularly high, compared with her height in the waist; and with sides which, attaining their full breadth scarcely a foot over the water, sloped abruptly inwards, towards the deck, like the wall of a mole or pier. The parapet-like bulwarks of both poop and forecastle were cut into deep embrasures, and ran, like those of a tower, all around the areas they enclosed, looking down nearly as loftily on the midships as on the water. The sides were black as pitch could render them—the sails scarcely less dark; but, as if to shew man's love of the ornamental in even the rudest stage of art, a huge misshapen lion flared in vermillion on the prow, and over the stern hung the blue flag of Scotland, with the silver cross of St Andrew stretching from corner to corner.
From eight to ten seamen lounged about the decks. They were uncouth-looking men, heavily attired in jerkins and caps of blue woollen, with long, thick beards, and strongly-marked features. The master, a man considerably advanced in life—for, though his eye seemed as bright as ever, his hair and beard had become white as snow—was rather better dressed. He wore above his jerkin a short cloak of blue which confessed, in its finer texture, the superiority of the looms of Flanders over those of his own country; and a slender cord of silver ran round a cap of the same material. His nether garments, however, were coarse and rude as those of his seamen; and the shoes he wore were fashioned, like theirs, of the undressed skin of the deer, with the hair still attached; giving to the foot that brush-like appearance which had acquired to his countrymen of the age, from their more polished neighbours, the appellation of rough-footed Scots. Neither the number, nor the appearance of the crew, singular and wild as the latter was, gave the vessel aught of a warlike aspect; and yet there were appearances that might have led one to doubt whether she was quite so unprepared for attack or defence as at the first view might be premised. There ran round the butt of each mast a rack filled with spears, of more knightly appearance than could have belonged to a few rude seamen—for of some of these the handles were chased with silver, and to some there were strips of pennon attached; and a rich crimson cloak, with several pieces of mail, were spread out to the morning sun, on one of the shrouds.
The crew, we have said, were lounging about the deck, unemployed in the calm, when a strong, iron-studded door opened in the poop, and a young and very handsome man stepped forward.