A thin cold rain was falling, and the archers were
crowded under the shelter of the overhanging poop and forecastle,
where some spent the hours at dice, some in sleep, and many in
trimming their arrows or polishing their weapons.
At the farther end, seated on a barrel as a throne of honor, with
trays and boxes of feathers around him, was Bartholomew the bowyer
and Fletcher, a fat, bald-headed man, whose task it was to see
that every man's tackle was as it should be, and who had the
privilege of selling such extras as they might need. A group of
archers with their staves and quivers filed before him with
complaints or requests, while half a dozen of the seniors gathered
at his back and listened with grinning faces to his comments and
rebukes.
"Canst not string it?" he was saying to a young bowman. "Then
surely the string is overshort or the stave overlong. It could
not by chance be the fault of thy own baby arms more fit to draw
on thy hosen than to dress a warbow. Thou lazy lurdan, thus is it
strung!" He seized the stave by the center in his right hand,
leaned the end on the inside of his right foot, and then, pulling
the upper nock down with the left hand, slid the eye of the string
easily into place. "Now I pray thee to unstring it again,"
handing it to the bowman.
The youth with an effort did so, but he was too slow in
disengaging his fingers, and the string sliding down with a snap
from the upper nock caught and pinched them sorely against the
stave.
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