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Roy and the other men followed. Adair now jumped on board, and made his way to the stern sheets. The bow-men shoved, off without waiting for orders, and bending to their oars the gig was soon across the bar. Saint Maur and Roy were too much out of breath to speak.
The country folk, who were prowling about the shore after the waifs of the storm, deserted "jetsom and lagend," and crowded to meet the richer prize which was coming in "flotsom," to become "jetsom" in its turn. "Axe-men and bow-men, put on your harness, and be ready; but neither strike nor shoot till I give the word. We must land peaceably if we can; if not, we will die fighting."
He lived to see the animosities between Englishmen and Normans beginning to die out, and to find our kings relying upon sturdy English men-at-arms and bow-men in their struggles with French kings and with the Norman barons who held so large a portion of English soil. Osgod became the seneschal of the castle, and held it for his lord during his absences in Normandy.
The number of these vessels proves that Louis was far from bringing one of those vast armies with which the first crusades had been familiar; it even appears that he had been careful to get rid of such mobs, for, before embarking, he sent away nearly ten thousand bow-men, Genoese, Venetian, Pisan, and even French, whom he had at first engaged, and of whom, after inspection, he desired nothing further.
The landing-place was crowded with boats; and it was not without sundry exchanges of foul words and oaths, and the bow-men dashing the points of their boat-hooks into the shore-boats, to make them keep clear of us, that we forced our way to the beach. The marine officer and all the stewards then left the boat, and I had to look after the men.
Those people come up, too, from the south and the south-east, and have to go back thither for seed if their sowings fail. Of course they like their animals tame, like the other fellows; but the grasses are their first string, as we bow-men say.
To his astonishment Joshua saw the huge shield, sword, or battle-axe of an Egyptian heavily-armed soldier in the hands of each of these sons of his people, but the shepherd's sling and the bag of round stones also hung from many girdles. Ephraim led his companions and, before greeting his uncle, formed them into two ranks like a double wall between Joshua and the hostile bow-men.
Here the besiegers are applying the battering ram; figures are falling from the walls, while from the three tiers of battlements the besieged are vigorously discharging arrows. The visitor will notice the figures of two bow-men on the fourth slab, before a lake, with part of a tower in the distance, and the next three slabs have representations of the fall of the city, picturesquely indicated.
When all was ready, the barge was shoved off by the bow-men, the crew dropped their oars into the water without a splash and pulled the minute stroke: the other boats followed, and as soon as they were clear of the ship, the minute guns boomed along the smooth surface of the bay from the opposite side of the ship, while the yards were topped to starboard and to port, the ropes were slackened and hung in bights, so as to give the idea of distress and neglect.
There were missing that day about two hundred bow-men, a few horse, and an inconsiderable number of servants and baggage. LII. However, by all these things, the price of provisions was raised, which is commonly a disaster attendant, not only on a time of present scarcity, but on the apprehension of future want.
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