e third the high land of Ushant lay like a mist upon
the shimmering sky-line. There came a plump of rain towards mid-day
and the breeze died down, but it freshened again before nightfall, and
Goodwin Hawtayne veered his sheet and held head for the south. Next
morning they had passed Belle Isle, and ran through the midst of a fleet
of transports returning from Guienne. Sir Nigel Loring and Sir Oliver
Buttesthorn at once hung their shields over the side, and displayed
their pennons as was the custom, noting with the keenest interest the
answering symbols which told the names of the cavaliers who had been
constrained by ill health or wounds to leave the prince at so critical a
time.

That evening a great dun-colored cloud banked up in the west, and an
anxious man was Goodwin Hawtayne, for a third part of his crew had been
slain, and half the remainder were aboard the galleys, so that, with
an injured ship, he was little fit to meet such a storm as sweeps over
those waters. All night it blew in short fitful puffs, heeling the great
cog over until the water curled over her lee bulwarks. As the wind still
freshened the yard was lowered half way down the mast in the morning.
Alleyne, wretchedly ill and weak, with his head still ringing from
the blow which he had received, crawled up upon deck. Water-swept and
aslant, it was preferable to the noisome, rat-haunted dungeons which
served as cabins. There, clinging to the stout halliards of the sheet,
he gazed with amazement at the long lines of black waves, each with
its curling ridge of foam, racing in endless succession from out the
inexhaustible west. A huge sombre cloud, flecked with livid blotches,
stretched over the whole seaward sky-line, with long ragged streamers
whirled out in front of it. Far behind them the two galleys labored
heavily, now sinking between the rollers until their yards were level
with the waves, and again shooting up with a reeling, scooping motion
until every spar and rope stood out hard against the sky. On the left
the low-lying land stretched in a dim haze, rising here and there into
a darker blur which marked the higher capes and headlands. The land
of France! Alleyne's eyes shone as he gazed upon it. The land of
France!--the very words sounded as the call of a bugle in the ears of
the youth of England. The land where their fathers had bled, the home of
chivalry and of knightly deeds, the country of gallant men, of courtly
women, of princely buildin