"Who is warden here?" asked Chandos, springing from his horse.
"Badding! Where is Cock Badding? Badding is warden!" shouted the crowd.
A moment later a short swarthy man, bull-necked and deep-chested, pushed through the people. He was clad in rough russet wool with a scarlet cloth tied round his black curly head. His sleeves were rolled up to his shoulders, and his brown arms, all stained with grease and tar, were like two thick gnarled branches from an oaken stump. His savage brown face was fierce and frowning, and was split from chin to temple with the long white wale of an ill-healed wound.
"How now, gentles, will you never wait your turn?" he rumbled in a deep angry voice. "Can you not see that we are warping the Rose of Guienne into midstream for the ebb-tide? Is this a time to break in upon us? Your goods will go aboard in due season, I promise you; so ride back into the town and find such pleasure as you may, while I and my mates do our work without let or hindrance."
"It is the gentle Chandos!" cried some one in the crowd. "It is the good Sir John."
The rough harbor-master changed his gruffness to smiles in an instant. "Nay, Sir John, what would you? I pray you to hold me excused if I was short of speech, but we port-wardens are sore plagued with foolish young lordlings, who get betwixt us and our work and blame us because we do not turn an ebb-tide into a flood, or a south wind into a north. I pray you to tell me how I can serve you."
"That boat!" said Chandos, pointing to the already distant sail rising and falling on the waves. "What is it?"
Cock Badding shaded his keen eyes with his strong brows hand. "She has but just gone out," said he. "She is La Pucelle, a small wine-sloop from Gascony, home-bound and laden with barrel-staves."
"I pray you did any man join her at the very last?"
"Nay, I know not. I saw no one."
"But I know," cried a seaman in the crowd. "I was standing at the wharf-side and was nigh knocked into the water by a little red-headed fellow, who breathed as though he had run from the town. Ere I had time to give him a cuff he had jumped aboard, the ropes were cast off, and her nose was seaward."
In a few words Chandos made all clear to Badding, the crowd pressing eagerly round.
"Aye, aye!" cried a seaman, "the good Sir John is right. See how she points. It is Picardy and not Gascony that she will fetch this journey in spite of her wine-staves."