"I must start at the beginning, and thou wilt then understand the more thoroughly. Know, then, that the French fleet mustered two hundred sail and more, many of their ships being of a size unheard of before, while we could gather little more than half their number. Our ships were scraped together from the Five Ports and anywhere along the coast where a stray trader could be found. But I’ll warrant thee the sailors of the Five Ports were little loath to lend their ships for the venture, for their rivalry with the mariners of the Norman coast is most exceeding bitter. When all that could be collected had been mustered in array, our good King Edward III filled them with his men-at-arms and archers, and we set sail. "Not a man of the whole company was more eager to get to grips with the enemy than Edward; and when we spied, over an intervening neck of land, a forest of masts clustering in the harbour of Sluys, he was overjoyed. However, for all his eagerness, he decided to anchor at sea for the night, and ’twas in the afternoon of the following day--the anniversary of Bannockburn, mark ye--that we stood in to fight the foe. "When they sighted us, the French sailed out a mile or so to meet us, and then anchored in four great lines across the bay and lashed their ships firmly together. We found it was a fourfold floating rampart that we had to assault, but--bah!--little enough shipman or soldier recked of that! "Full speed we bore down on the foremost line of ships and ground into them, our archers sending a storm of shafts in advance that raked them through and through. Many of their big ships had platforms high up filled with Genoese crossbowmen, and loaded with stones to fling down upon us; but our archers poured in a fire so fierce and fast that those who survived were glad to escape to deck as best they could. Then came the turn of knights and men-at-arms, and like a mountain torrent we poured upon the decks of the Frenchmen’s ships. The fighting was hard and fierce--the struggle of men who had long ached to spring at one another’s throats. "But our martial King’s gallant example, and the knightly zest of his nobles, gave an eagerness to our men that soon forced the French, though they fought right well, to give back, and presently we had mastered the first line and began to burst through upon the next. ’Twas then that---- Ah! What have we here?" At the sudden exclamation, and the equally sudden reining in of the steed, the boy, who had been entirely absorbed in his companion’s narrative, glanced quickly ahead to see the cause of the interruption.