"Mayhap, mayhap," answered Ralph, "but I am mortal weak in my body for a hale man, Messer Matteo. Could you not be having the shipman turn about and leave me behind? I have no bowels for this kind of venturing." "There will be shame in your heart for those words in a few hours, Ralph," said Hugh sternly. "Do you come up to the poop with us and lie out there in the open. Perchance that chicken-heart of yours will win back the allegiance of your belly." Groaning and protesting, Ralph suffered himself to be led up the steep ladder-stairs to the narrow space in front of the stern-castle, where the rudder-post came up through the deck-planking. Here he was deposited in a recumbent position, and very shortly, lulled by the rocking of the cog and the creak of the rigging, he dropped off to sleep--to the great relief of Hugh, who was half-inclined to believe him really smitten by one of the little-known epidemic diseases which ravaged the mediæval world. "But an it be the sea-illness you speak of," remonstrated Hugh, "why have I escaped? I am as new to it as Ralph, and must as surely succumb." "Not so," objected Matteo. "There are men who never feel the ship-nausea, and there are others--stout captains of the Venetians, Pisans, Genoese and other seafaring races, I have known--must always inure themselves anew to the experience at the start of each voyage." "They must be greatly wedded to the sea to suffer such discomfort." "Ay, that they are. You will comprehend it when you meet the Venetians and see their wonderful city. Ah, Hugh, there are a people for you! They have made the sea their servant, and on it they traffic to the ends of the world. Kings and Empires fear them. Without them our barons of Outremer could not stand a month against the Saracens." "Ay, they have the idea of it," chimed in Messer Nicholas from his post by the tiller, now in the hands of one of his subordinates. "With them merchants are nobles. To be great, in their estimation, is to be successful in trade. They have none of your finicking notions of gentilesse." "But surely, good Messer Shipman, you will admit that a strong feudal structure is necessary to the welfare of any state," said Hugh haughtily. "A community of merchants could never last long, if it came to a question of the sword." "Ah, lordling, but that's where you are wrong," returned the shipman. "The Venetians are warriors, as well as traders. They fight for what they want, and they will fight anybody to keep what they once get their hands upon. Is it not so, fair sir?" he appealed to Matteo. "Ay, Hugh, that is the right of it," agreed Matteo. "They are a peculiar people. There are none like them, save it be some of the free cities of Germany and the Flemings."