“Never, I trust,” said Amyas.

“’Tain’t no use trusting, young man:  you go and do.  I do hear too much of that there from my lad.  Let they ministers preach till they’m black in the face, works is the trade!” with a nudge in Amyas’s ribs.  “Faith can’t save, nor charity nether.  There, you tell with him, while I go play bowls with Drake.  He’ll tell you a sight of stories.  You ask him about good King Hal, now, just—­”

And off waddled the Port Admiral.

“You have seen good King Henry, then, father?” said Amyas, interested.

The old man’s eyes lighted at once, and he stopped mumbling his sugar.

“Seed mun?  Iss, I reckon.  I was with Captain Will when he went to meet the Frenchman there to Calais—­at the Field, the Field—­”

“The Field of the Cloth of Gold, gramfer,” suggested the dame.

“That’s it.  Seed mun?  Iss, fegs.  Oh, he was a king!  The face o’ mun like a rising sun, and the back o’ mun so broad as that there” (and he held out his palsied arms), “and the voice of mun!  Oh, to hear mun swear if he was merry, oh, ’tas royal!—­Seed mun?  Iss, fegs!  And I’ve seed mun do what few has; I’ve seed mun christle like any child.”

“What—­cry?” said Amyas.  “I shouldn’t have thought there was much cry in him.”

“You think what you like—­”

“Gramfer, gramfer, don’t you be rude, now—­

“Let him go on,” said Amyas.

“I seed mun christle; and, oh dear, how he did put hands on mun’s face; and ‘Oh, my gentlemen,’ says he, ‘my gentlemen!  Oh, my gallant men!’ Them was his very words.”

“But when?”

“Why, Captain Will had just come to the Hard—­that’s to Portsmouth—­to speak with mun, and the barge Royal lay again the Hard—­so; and our boot alongside—­so; and the king he standth as it might be there, above my head, on the quay edge, and she come in near abreast of us, looking most royal to behold, poor dear! and went to cast about.  And Captain Will, saith he, ‘Them lower ports is cruel near the water;’ for she had not more than a sixteen inches to spare in the nether overloop, as I heard after.  And saith he, ’That won’t do for going to windward in a say, Martin.’  And as the words came out of mun’s mouth, your worship, there was a bit of a flaw from the westward, sharp like, and overboard goeth my cap, and hitth against the wall, and as I stooped to pick it up, I heard a cry, and it was all over!”

“He is telling of the Mary Rose, sir.”

“I guessed so.”

“All over:  and the cry of mun, and the screech of mun!  Oh, sir, up to the very heavens!  And the king he screeched right out like any maid, ’Oh my gentlemen, oh my gallant men!’ and as she lay on her beam-ends, sir, and just a-settling, the very last souls I seen was that man’s father, and that man’s.  I knowed mun by their armor.”

And he pointed to Sir George Carew and Sir Richard Grenville.

“Iss!  Iss!  Drowned like rattens.  Drowned like rattens!”