‘Yes. And while I am tearing my hair over this, Ticehurst Will, my best mason, comes to me shaking, and vowing that the Devil, horned, tailed, and chained, has run out on him from the church-tower, and the men would work there no more. So I took ’em off the foundations, which we were strengthening, and went into the Bell Tavern for a cup of ale. Says Master John Collins: “Have it your own way, lad; but if I was you, I’d take the sinnification o’ the sign, and leave old Barnabas’s Church alone!” And they all wagged their sinful heads, and agreed. Less afraid of the Devil than of me—as I saw later. ‘When I brought my sweet news to Lindens, Sebastian was limewashing the kitchen-beams for Mother. He loved her like a son. ‘“Cheer up, lad,” he says. “God’s where He was. Only you and I chance to be pure pute asses! We’ve been tricked, Hal, and more shame to me, a sailor, that I did not guess it before! You must leave your belfry alone, forsooth, because the Devil is adrift there; and I cannot get my serpentines because John Collins cannot cast them aright. Meantime Andrew Barton hawks off the Port of Rye. And why? To take those very serpentines which poor Cabot must whistle for; the said serpentines, I’ll wager my share of new Continents, being now hid away in St. Barnabas church tower. Clear as the Irish coast at noonday!” ‘“They’d sure never dare to do it,” I said; “and for another thing, selling cannon to the King’s enemies is black treason—hanging and fine.” ‘“It is sure large profit. Men’ll dare any gallows for that. I have been a trader myself,” says he. “We must be upsides with ’em for the honour of Bristol.” ‘Then he hatched a plot, sitting on the lime-wash bucket. We gave out to ride o’ Tuesday to London and made a show of making farewells of our friends—especially of Master John Collins. But at Wadhurst Woods we turned; rode by night to the watermeadows; hid our horses in a willow-tot at the foot of the glebe, and stole a-tiptoe up hill to Barnabas’s church again. A thick mist, and a moon coming through. ‘I had no sooner locked the tower-door behind us than over goes Sebastian full length in the dark. ‘“Pest!” he says. “Step high and feel low, Hal. I’ve stumbled over guns before.” ‘I groped, and one by one—the tower was pitchy dark—I counted the lither barrels of twenty serpentines laid out on pease-straw. No conceal at all! ‘“There’s two demi-cannon my end,” says Sebastian, slapping metal. “They’ll be for Andrew Barton’s lower deck. Honest—honest John Collins! So this is his warehouse, his arsenal, his armoury! Now, see you why your pokings and pryings have raised the Devil in Sussex? You’ve hindered John’s lawful trade for months,” and he laughed where he lay. ‘A clay-cold tower is no fireside at midnight, so we climbed the belfry stairs, and there Sebastian trips over a cow-hide with its horns and tail.