Now again I say it, I have thought over this matter many a time, and have even laughed aloud and bitterly, when I was alone, at the figure of me shivering there, on a cold February day, and at my helpless estate.  For a naked man is no match for a man with a whinger, and he was sitting on my clothes.  So this friar, unworthy as he was of his holy calling, had me at an avail on every side, nor do I yet see what I could do but obey him, as I did.  And when I landed from this fifth voyage, he laughed and gave me his blessing, and, what I needed more, some fiery spirits from a water-gourd, in which Father Thomas carried no water.

“Well done, my son,” he said, “and now we are comrades.  My life was not over safe on yonder side, seeing that the ‘manants’ hate me, and respect not my hood, and two are better company than one, where we are going.”

This encounter was the beginning of many evils, and often now the picture shines upon my eyes, and I see the grey water, and hear the cold wind whistle in the dry reeds of the river-bank whereon we sat.

The man was my master, Heaven help me! as surely as Sathanas was his.  And though, at last, I slipped his clutches, as you shall hear (more readily than, I trow, he will scape his lord in the end, for he still lives), yet it was an ill day that we met—­an ill day for me and for France.  Howbeit we jogged on, he merrily enough singing a sculdudery song, I something surly, under a grey February sky, with a keen wind searching out the threadbare places in our raiment.  My comrade, as he called himself, told me what passages he chose in the history of his life:  how he came to be frocked (but ’cucullus non facit monachum’), and how, in the troubles of these times, he had discovered in himself a great aptitude for the gunner’s trade, of which he boasted not a little.  He had been in one and another of these armed companies that took service with either side, for hire, being better warriors and more skilled than the noblesse, but a curse to France:  for, in peace or war, friend or foe, they plundered all, and held all to ransom.  With Rodrigo de Villandradas, that blood-hound of Spain, he had been high in favour, but when Rodrigo went to harry south and east, he had tarried at Ruffec, with another thief of that nation, Alfonse Rodigo.  All his talk, as we went, was of slaying men in fight; whom he slew he cared not much, but chiefly he hated the English and them of Burgundy.  To him, war was what hunting and shooting game is to others; a cruel and bloody pastime, when Christians are the quarry!

“John the Lorrainer, and I, there are no others to be named with us at the culverin,” he would brag.  “We two against an army, give us good cover, and powder and leaden balls enough.  Hey!  Master John and I must shoot a match yet, against English targets, and of them there are plenty under Orleans.  But if I make not the better speed, the town will have fallen, or yielded, rescue or no rescue, and of rescue there is no hope at all.  The devil fights for the English, who will soon be swarming over the Loire, and that King of Bourges of ours will have to flee, and gnaw horse’s fodder, oats and barley, with your friends in Scotland.”