"Aye, aye!" responded Fleming. "He shall see the Golden Horn go out."
She cleared the harbor in gallant style, with her sails full spread, while Richard busied himself among his men. The crew was thirty strong, mostly Englishmen.
"I have but twenty men-at-arms," said Richard to himself at the end of his inspection, "but there are two hundred and more of bowmen, and over a hundred Irish pikemen, besides the Welshmen. What bones those Irish are made with! I will serve out axes among them without delay. Fine chopping should be done by such brawny axemen as they."
"Richard Neville," whispered an eager voice at his elbow, "I pray thee hearken. One of the sailors, a Londoner, understandeth Flemish. He hath heard the captain and his son have speech with one on the pier. There is treason afoot, my Lord. Watch thou, and I will pass the word among the men."
"Tell all," said Richard, with a hot flush on his face; but there was little enough to tell. It could be but a warning, a cause for suspicion and for care.
"Guy the Bow," said Richard, at the end of their brief talk, "seek among the sailors for a true Englishman fit to take the helm if I smite off the head of this Piers Fleming. Let thy man keep near me if a foe appeareth."
Yet stronger blew the south wind, and, as Piers had said, with it came a thick, bluish mist that hid the ships from one another and made it impossible for any landsman on board of them to more than guess in what direction he might be going. It was therefore not thought of by Richard as of any importance that the Golden Horn was speeding full before the wind. She was going northerly, instead of taking a tack toward La Hogue. Right with her blew the mist, and hour after hour went by. Several times hoarse hails were heard and answered, but all were in the hearty voices of loyal Englishmen, and Richard said to one of his men-at-arms:
"We are with the fleet, and all is well."
Most of them had put aside their armor, as being too heavy to wear needlessly during so sultry a day; for it was the 2d of July, 1346, and the summer was a warm one; the bowmen and pikemen also had taken off their heavy buff coats and laid aside their arms.
But among the groups passed some of Richard's Longwood archers, talking low; and all the while, without attracting attention, sheaves of arrows, extra spears, with poleaxes and battle-axes and shields, were being handed up from the store of weapons in the hold.