"Are they?" exclaimed William, much disappointed. "Then, by the splendour of God! I will show them that I can conquer England without their help." "But," asked the boy-king, with a sneer, "who will take care of your duchy while you are grasping at a crown?" "My duchy," answered William, fiercely, "shall not trouble my neighbours. I have a spouse of prudence, who can take charge of my duchy, and could take charge of much more, if it were necessary." And King Philip parted with his great subject, whom he was never henceforth to think of but as a formidable foe. [Illustration] XVI. [Illustration: The good ship Moira, William of Normandy, owner] THE NORMAN ARMAMENT. All through the summer of 1066, while England was ringing with alarm, Normandy was resounding with preparations; armourers were busy forging weapons and coats of mail; shipwrights were occupied with the construction of vessels; and men were continually employed carrying arms from workshop to port. Everything, meantime, seemed to favour William's project of conquest; and he fixed on a day about the middle of August as the time for his departure. The mouth of the Dive was appointed as the rendezvous; and there, in good time, William's mighty armament was ready for the enterprise. Sixty thousand men came to the Norman standard; and the fleet consisted of four hundred ships and a thousand other vessels, great and small. For a month, however, the winds, proving adverse, detained the fleet in port. An Anglo-Saxon was caught making observations, taken into custody, and carried before William. "You are a spy," said the duke. The man, with William's terrible eye upon him, could not muster courage to deny the charge. "Nevertheless," said the duke, "you shall see everything; though Harold need not trouble himself to ascertain my force; for he shall both see and feel it, ere the year has run its course." At length a southern breeze sprang up, and the Normans set sail. But they soon found the impossibility of proceeding on their voyage. Carried as far as the roadstead of St. Valery, at the mouth of the Somme, they were under the necessity of landing and submitting to a further delay. William's patience was now severely tried. The weather was stormy; rain fell in torrents; some ships, shattered by the tempest, sank with their crews; and the men began to lose heart. The fearful difficulties that beset the enterprise forced themselves on every mind; and while conversing with each other under their tents, dripping with water, they talked of the ships that had been lost, and exaggerated the number of the bodies cast ashore. "The man is mad who thus seeks to seize the land of another," said some of the soldiers. "And, doubtless," suggested others, "God is offended with such designs, and proves it by refusing us a favourable wind."