"Then approached the great ships of England, the Earl of Arundel with his company, and the Bishop of Norwich with his; and so the other lords. They rushed in among the Flemings' ships, and them of La Rochelle: yet the Flemings and cross-bows defended themselves right valiantly, for their patron, Sir John de Bucq, did ever support them: he was in a great strong ship, where he had three guns shooting so great stones, that wheresoever they lighted they did great damage. And even as they fought they drew little and little towards Flanders; and some little ships, with their merchants, took the coasts of Flanders, and the low water, and thereby saved them, for the great ships could not follow them. "Thus on the sea they had a hard battle, and ships broken and sunken on both sides; for out of the tops they cast down great bars of iron, sharpened so that they went through to the bottom. This was a hard battle and well fought, for it endured three whole tides; and when the day failed they withdrew from each other, and cast anchor, and there rested all night, and there dressed their hurt men: and when the flood came, they disanchored and drew up sails and returned again to battle. "With the Englishmen was Peter du Bois of Ghent, with certain archers and mariners; he gave the Flemings much ado, for he had been a mariner, therefore he knew the art of the sea, and he was sore displeased that the Flemings and merchants endured so long. But always the Englishmen won advantage of the Flemings, and so came between Blankenburgh and Sluys, against Cadsand; there was the discomfiture, for the Flemings were not succoured by any creature; and also at that time there were no ships at Sluys, nor men of war.... By this discomfiture of Sir John de Bucq, as he came from La Rochelle, the Englishmen had great profit, specially of wine, for they had a nine thousand tuns of wine; whereby wine was the dearer all the year after in Flanders, Holland, and Brabant, and the better cheap in England, as it was reason. Such are the chances of this world; if one hath damage another hath profit." There are one or two very interesting points in this account. One, of course, is the fact that there were three guns mounted on John de Bucq's ship, which evidently was exceptional at the time, or attention would not have been so particularly drawn to them. Moreover, they were not little guns, like those which were mounted in such numbers a few years later, but of some size, since they fired "_great_ stones". But the most noteworthy point that emerges from the story of the fight is that not only were the cross-bowmen able to fire from under cover on the English without exposing themselves, but their bows had actually outranged the long-bows. Now we know that a long-bow in expert hands would kill at 400 yards, so that the effective range of the cross-bow must have been considerable. FOOTNOTE: [16] "_Bus_", "ships of the largest size, with triple sails". CHAPTER VI