Page:A C Doyle - The White Company.djvu/394

360 'there is what hath done scath to good bowmanship, with its filthy soot and foolish roaring mouth. I wonder that a true knight, like our prince, should carry such a scurvy thing in his train. Robin, thou red-headed lurden, how oft must I tell thee not to shoot straight with a quarter wind blowing across the mark?'

'By these ten finger-bones! there were some fine bowmen at the intaking of Calais,' said Aylward. 'I well remember that, on occasion of an outfall, a Genoan raised his arm over his mantlet and shook it at us, a hundred paces from our line. There were twenty who loosed shafts at him, and when the man was afterwards slain, it was found that he had taken eighteen through his fore-arm.'

'And I can call to mind,' remarked Johnston, 'that when the great cog "Christopher," which the French had taken from us, was moored two hundred paces from the shore, two archers, little Robin Withstaff and Elias Baddlesmere, in four shots each cut every strand of her hempen anchor-cord, so that she well-nigh came upon the rocks.'

'Good shooting, i' faith, rare shooting,' said Black Simon. 'But I have seen you, Johnston, and you, Samkin Aylward, and one or two others who are still with us, shoot as well as the best. Was it not you, Johnston, who took the fat ox at Finsbury butts against the pick of London town?'

A sunburnt and black-eyed Brabanter had stood near the old archers, leaning upon a large crossbow and listening to their talk, which had been carried on in that hybrid camp dialect which both nations could understand. He was a squat, bull-necked man, clad in the iron helmet, mail tunic, and woollen gambesson of his class. A jacket with hanging sleeves, slashed with velvet at the neck and wrists, showed that he was a man of some consideration, an under-officer, or file-leader of his company.

'I cannot think,' said he, 'why you English should be so fond of your six-foot stick. If it amuse you to bend it, well and good; but why should I strain and pull, when my