spied a boat, empty but for one man, drifting a mile
and more to leeward. Zarco ran down for the boat, and the man, being
brought aboard, was found to be an escaped Moorish prisoner on his
way back to Spain. He gave his name as Morales, and said that he had
sometime been a pilot of Seville, but being captured by the Moors off
Algeciras, had spent close on twenty years in servitude to them.
In the end he and six other Christians had escaped in a boat of their
own making, but with few victuals. When these were consumed his
companions had perished one by one, horribly, and he had been sailing
without hope, not caring whither, for a day and a night before his
rescue came.

"Now this much he told them painfully, being faint with fasting and
light-headed: but afterwards falling into a delirium, he let slip
certain words that caused Captain Zarco to bestow him in a cabin
apart and keep watch over him until the ship reached Lagos, whence he
conveyed him secretly and by night to Prince Henry, who dwelt at that
time in an arsenal of his own building, on the headland of Sagres.
There Prince Henry questioned him, and the old man, taken by
surprise, told them a story both true and wonderful.

"In his captivity he had made friends with a fellow prisoner, an
Englishman named Prince or Prance (since dead, after no less than
thirty years of servitude), who had fallen among the Moors in the
manner following. In his youth he had been a seaman, and one day in
the year 1370 he was standing idle on Bristol Quay when a young
squire accosted him and offered to hire him for a voyage to France,
naming a good wage and pressing no small share of it upon him as
earnest money. The ship (he said, naming her) lay below at Avonmouth
and would sail that same night. Prince knew the ship and her master,
and judged from the young squire's apparel and bearing that here was
one of those voluntary expeditions by which our young nobles made it
a fashion to seek fame at the expense of our enemies the French; a
venture dangerous indeed but carrying a hopeful chance of high
profits. He agreed, therefore, and joined the ship a little after
nightfall. Toward midnight arrived a boat with our young squire and
one companion, a lady of extreme beauty, who had no sooner climbed
the ship's side than the master cut the anchor-cable and stood out
for sea.

"The names of these pretty runaways were Robert Machin and Anne
d'Arfet, wife of a sour merchant of Bristo