High and bluff the English cog; long, black and swift the pirate galleys, like two fierce lean wolves which have seen a lordly and unsuspecting stag walk past their forest lair.
"Shall we turn, my fair lord, or shall we carry on ?" asked the master-shipman, looking behind him with anxious eyes.
"Nay, we must carry on and play the part of the helpless merchant." "But your pennons?
They will see that we have two knights with us." "Yet it would not be to a knight's honor or good name to lower his pennon.

Let them be, and they will think that we are a wine-ship for Gascony, or that we bear the wool-bales of some mercer of the Staple.

Ma foi, but they are very swift! They swoop upon us like two goshawks on a heron.

Is there not some symbol or device upon their sails ?" "That on the right," said Edricson, "appears to have the head of an Ethiop upon it." "'Tis the badge of Tete-noire, the Norman," cried a seaman-mariner.

"I have seen it before, when he harried us at Winchelsea.