In the King’s barge all men were silent, and avoided each other’s eyes as though fearing to see what each man felt to be too urgent in his own. Richard sat stiff as a wooden figure in the stern, an earl on either side of him. He wore his crown and robes of state, and the royal sword lay sheathed upon his knees. Warwick, who sat at his right elbow, kept pouring a whisper of words into his ear; but Richard never opened his lips, nor did he seem to hear. His eyes threw out uncertain, flickering glances that wavered from side to side. He watched the blades of the oars churning up foam, and since his lips were dry, he kept moistening them with his tongue. As they drew towards Rotherhithe, a knight who was standing in the bow of the barge uttered a “Grace of God,” and shaded his eyes with his hand. “My lord, look yonder!” Salisbury stood up, to see what should have been a green meadow sloping to the river, turned brown by a great swarm of men. Thousands of peasants were crowded along the southern bank, and they were silent with a strange, hungry silence, waiting for the coming of the King. “By the Virgin, they have sent ten thousand men instead of ten score.” Then, quite suddenly, as though from some crack in the earth, a huge, rolling shout went up from the southern bank. They had seen the King’s banner at the stern of the barge, and the whole brown multitude bayed, and jostled, and jumped on each other’s shoulders to get a view. The clamour had a ragged and ferocious edge to its exultation. It was like the uproar among caged beasts when the keeper appears with red meat on an iron spit. The lad wearing the crown sat rigid, and went white to the eyes. The two earls looked at each other over his head, and drew closer to him as though to warm him with the heat of their manhood. He was cold in the sun, and his teeth were chattering. “Courage, Sire.” “They shout for the joy of seeing you.” Salisbury spoke sharply to the steersman, and the barge ran on, the crowd along the bank unfolding itself like a grotesque tapestry upon a wall. Every sort of face seemed there—hairy, smooth, red, sallow, old, young, round, lean, some like screaming birds, others like neighing horses, all hooting, bellowing, and howling so that each open mouth was a red hole spouting sound. The uproar made the ears sing. Some of the men had stripped off their clothes, and danced with a kind of obscene bravado. Caps were waved, fists shaken at the nobles. Salisbury, who was standing up, very white and fierce and calm, signed to the rowers to rest on their oars and let the barge glide along about thirty yards from the bank. A storm of cries swept across the water. “Land—land.” “Come ashore!” “Death to the lords!” “Come ashore, King Dick; we honest men would speak with you.” “Wow, wow, wow!” “Father Adam’s come to court.” “Sit you down, big belly. Up with the King.” The two earls sat close to Richard, half holding him with the pressure of their bodies.