“It is, my son,” said the abbot, “a path full of danger.  But also, as our brother saith, an enterprise both noble and knightly, for the saving of these men of God, and the feeble ones that are sheltered in our fold, not alone from death, but from rude insult and sharp pain.”

I told my lord that I was indeed willing to accept it, though I loved life full dearly.  And he, assuring me that all matters of my setting forth that night were in Brother Hugo’s hands, bent over me, and pressing his hands, that trembled the while, on my young head, committed me to God’s care.  And I went forth calm and steady with his holy words yet in my ears and a great glory of gladness in my heart, that I, still a lad, was thus chosen for a knight’s work.

I was to set out, Hugo told me, at nightfall from a little cove named Bordeaux Bay that lay hard by the Castle.  Old Simon Renouf, a wary pilot amid the dangerous rocks and shallows of our seas, was, with one other, to be my comrade, and I was to be clad in the rough dress of the fisher folk in case of capture.  We were that night to make for the Isle of Jersey, and craftily to lie hid in a quiet opening in the rocks for the day, and then next day, if the wind were good, to sail to the port of Granville in Normandy.

Now, it was arranged I was to bear no written message to my lord the duke, only a ring of gold hung in a little bag about my neck, that our abbot said would stand me in better stead with William, recalling past services and duties, and would be thought, were I taken by the pirates, but some harmless relic or valued heirloom.  Now, the ring had on it but the letter “A,” and the motto inscribed around “Loyal devoir.”

And so at nightfall we went forth from the back side of the Castle, down the steep and rugged path that led at length to the shore of Bordeaux Bay, Brother Hugo, as we went, giving me words of good counsel as to my behaviour before Duke William, impressing on him the insult of these knaves to his high fame as duke, and how I should keep a still tongue if I fell into the hands of the Grand Sarrasin.

We found Simon Renouf and Jacques de la Mare waiting for us in their small fishing-smack which I knew so well, having so often sailed with them as boy and lad, and well they loved me, as did all the fishers of Grande Havre and St. Sampson.  But now, as Jacques took the tiller, old Simon bade me handle the sail, as though I were indeed that which I appeared, a raw hand learning seaman’s craft.  Right manfully I took up my task, and in a moment the dark sail ran up the mast, Simon undid the fastening and pushed off, and with Jacques cunningly guiding us from the rocks, the boat stole noiselessly from the bay, coasting northward for a space to get away from the Moorish ships that still lay outside, and then, aided by a dim white mist that lay upon the face of the waters and a chill night-breeze, we bore away to the south of Herm and Jethou, whose craggy sides loomed black and terrible as we sailed by.