“When I was in Spain,” said Edrupt, “I heard a monk preaching a new religion.  He urged his hearers to aid in rescuing the captives held in Moslem slavery.  ’Tis said he has saved many.”

“Were it not well,” pursued Brother Ambrosius as if he had not heard, “to think upon the glorious opportunity of a captive to bear witness to his faith?  We read how angels delivered the apostles from prison, and how Saint Paul in his bonds exhorted and rebuked his people, to the edification of many.”

“True,” commented Gilbert Gay rather dryly, “but we are not all Saint Pauls.  And I have never known of God sending angels to do work that He might properly expect of men and women.”

This was a new idea to Brother Ambrosius.  Not finding a place in his mind for one just then, he looked meek and said nothing, and presently took his leave.

“Saint Paul was a tentmaker, was he not?” queried Guy Bouverel when the door had closed upon the churchman.  “Had he rowed in the galleys I doubt whether we should have had those Epistles.”

Nicholas recalled this conversation the next day, as the sturdy little ship of English oak filled her great sails and went blithely out upon the widening estuary of the Thames.  The last of the dear London landmarks faded into the gray soft sky.  Soon the sailors would begin to look for Sheerness and the Forelands, Dungeness, Beachy Head.  Nicholas leaned on the rail above the dancing morning waters and remembered it all.

There was his mother’s sweet pale face under the white coif, her busy fingers completing a last bit of stitchery for him.  There was his father’s fine, keen, kindly face bent over his account-books and coffers.  There was pretty Genevieve, his sister, with her husband, Crispin Eyre.  And there were the comrades of his boyhood, and the prating monk, and the unhappy lady with her white face framed in rich velvets and furs, and her piteous beseeching hands that were never still.  Those faces, in the glow of the fire and the shine of tall candles in their silver sconces, were to be with him often in the months to come.

Edrupt came up just as a long Venetian galley went plowing out to sea, the great oars flashing in the sunlight, one rank above another.  “They do not have to pray for a fair wind, those Venetians,” Nicholas commented idly.

“That galley’s past praying for anything,” Edrupt said grimly.  “You may be glad that your men fear neither wind nor seas—­nor you.  ’Tis an ill thing to sail the seas with those who serve only through fear.”

Nicholas had not thought of it in that way.  He knew, of course, that the slaves who rowed the racing galleys were the offscouring of mankind, desperate men, drawn from all nations.  It was as much as two men could do to handle one oar, and all must pull in unison as a huge machine.  The Venetian dromond was to other merchant-ships as the dromedary to other camels.  To make the speed required the rowers must put forth their whole strength, hour after hour, day after day.