struck the foremost Frenchman to the heart. A moment later a
boat dashed up alongside and four more men from the Marie Rose scrambled
on to the blood-stained deck. With one fierce rush the remaining
Frenchmen were struck down or were seized by their assailants. Nine
prostrate men upon the deck showed how fierce had been the attack, how
desperate the resistance.

Badding leaned panting upon his blood-clotted hammer. "By Saint
Leonard!" he cried, "I thought that this little master had been the
death of us all. God wot you were but just in time, and how you came I
know not. This archer has had a hand in it, by the look of him."

Aylward, still pale from his seasickness and dripping from head to foot
with water, had been the first man in the rescue party.

Nigel looked at him in amazement. "I sought you aboard the ship,
Aylward, but I could not lay eyes on you," said he.

"It was because I was in the water, fair sir, and by my hilt! it suits
my stomach better than being on it," he answered. "When you first set
forth I swam behind you, for I saw that the Frenchman's boat hung by a
rope, and I thought that while you kept him in play I might gain it.
I had reached it when you were driven back, so I hid behind it in the
water and said my prayers as I have not said them for many a day. Then
you came again, and no one had an eye for me, so I clambered into it,
cut the rope, took the oars which I found there and brought her back for
more men."

"By Saint Paul! you have acted very wisely and well," said Nigel, "and I
think that of all of us it is you who have won most honor this day. But
of all these men dead and alive I see none who resembles that Red Ferret
whom my Lord Chandos has described and who has worked such despite upon
us in the past: It would indeed be an evil chance if he has in spite of
all our pains made his way to France in some other boat."

"That we shall soon find out," said Badding. "Come with me and we will
search the ship from truck to keel ere he escapes us."

There was a scuttle at the base of the mast which led down into the body
of the vessel, and the Englishmen were approaching this when a strange
sight brought them to a stand. A round brazen head had appeared in the
square dark opening. An instant afterward a pair of shining shoulders
followed. Then slowly the whole figure of a man in complete plate-armor
emerged on the deck. In his gauntleted hand he carried a heavy steel
mace. With this uplifte