"Words will not give me
back my two hundred men. Unless I find them before I come to
Saint-Malo, I swear by Saint Wilfrid of Ripon that it will be an
evil day for you! Enough! Go forth and do what you may!"
For five hours with a light breeze behind them they lurched
through the heavy fog, the cold rain still matting their beards
and shining on their faces. Sometimes they could see a circle of
tossing water for a bowshot or so in each direction, and then the
wreaths would crawl in upon them once more and bank them thickly
round. They had long ceased to blow the trumpet for their missing
comrades, but had hopes when clear weather came to find them still
in sight. By the shipman's reckoning they were now about midway
between the two shores.
Nigel was leaning against the bulwarks, his thoughts away in the
dingle at Cosford and out on the heather-clad slopes of Hindhead,
when something struck his ear. It was a thin clear clang of
metal, pealing out high above the dull murmur of the sea, the
creak of the boom and the flap of the sail. He listened, and
again it was borne to his ear.
"Hark, my lord!" said he to Sir Robert. "Is there not a sound in
the fog?"
They both listened together with sidelong heads. Then it rang
clearly forth once more, but this time in another direction. It
had been on the bow; now it was on the quarter.
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