I left for the wars, and at any time he said he would stand my friend,
with a greater air of power, it struck me, than one could show who knew
no other future than more long years of exile, such as he now lived in
our small isle.

Now, as I turned from the drawbridge at the moat-house of Blanchelande
to go homewards the remembrance came to me of those men that I guessed
were pirates digging their storehouse in mother earth in the midst of
the wood. And thinking on it, though I feared them not, I had no taste
to return to the vale that way. So, instead, I followed the path rugged
and uneven as it was, along the side of the cliff to the northward.
First along the gorge of the Bay of Saints I went by the side of the
stream that ran singing from Blanchelande, and then I cut straight up
the cliff amid the heather, and so came into sight of Moulin Huet, where
an ugly craft, that I liked not the sight of lay at anchor, right under
the nose of Jerbourg Castle, wherein our abbot had a small corps of men,
even as at the Vale. I stood a moment looking down on her riding deep in
the sky-blue water, and presently I saw a boat put out from shore with
men on board that rowed towards her. I could not tell if they were the
same I saw up by the château, but I guessed they were, as I saw them
climb into the bark. And then I journeyed on, clinging here and there to
the cliff or the green stuff that grew thereon, like a very cat of the
woods, past Fermain Bay, and through the little township of St. Pierre
Port, and I wondered, since the pirate bark was so near at hand, that
naught was stirring in the street or on the jetty. Now, St. Pierre Port
was a pleasant place to me. A little world of its own, for every man of
St. Pierre Port was a soldier, and could draw bow and slash with his
broadsword, and pirates meddled not much with St. Pierre Port, for its
men were tough and stern and loved their homes right well.