board, the master stood at the stern, ready to ship the long rudder as
soon as she had taken the water. Two men in the bows took in the slack
of the cable, by which the anchor had been dropped some fifty yards
out, so as to keep her head straight when she should leave the
temporary ways. By the mast, for the vessel had but one, stood Gilbert
Warde, watching all that was done, with the profoundly ignorant
interest which landsmen always show in nautical matters. It seemed very
slow to him, and he wondered why the man with the long beard, far up
the beach, did not let go, so that the boat might launch herself. And
while he was trying to solve the problem, something happened which he
could not understand: a chorus of wild yells went up from the sailors
under the sides, the master in the stern threw up one hand and shouted,
the old man let go and yelled back an answer, Gilbert heard a rattling
of chains, and then all at once the boat gathered way, and shot like an
arrow through the low curling surf, far out upon the heaving grey water
beyond, while the two men in the bows got in the slack of the cable,
hand over hand, like madmen, panting audibly, till at last the vessel
swung off by her head and rode quietly at her anchor. An hour later,
with twenty sweeps swinging rhythmically in the tholes, and a fair
southwesterly breeze, the sharp-cut boat was far out in the English
Channel, and before night, the wind holding fair and freshening, the
master dropped anchor almost under the shadow of the Count of Flanders'
castle at Calais. So Gilbert Warde left England, a wanderer,
disinherited of all that should have been his, owing all that he had to
Lambert de Clare, Abbot of Sheering, in the shape of mail and other
armour, with such fine clothes as a young nobleman should have with him
on a journey, two horses, and a purse of which the contents should last
him several months on his travels. For attendants he had with him a
fair-haired Saxon lad who had run away from Stoke to Sheering, and had
refused to leave Gilbert, whom he looked upon as his lawful master; and