Thus it stood when the Wersgor ship arrived.

Well I remember the day. I was out on an errand. The weather had turned sunny after rain, the town street was ankle-deep in mud. I picked my way through the aimless crowds of soldiery, nodding to such as I knew. All at once a great cry arose. I lifted my head like the others.

Lo! It was as a miracle! Down through the sky, seeming to swell monstrously with the speed of its descent, came a ship all of metal. So bright was the sunlight off its polished sides that I could not see its form clearly. A huge cylinder, I thought, easily two thousand feet long. Save for the whistle of wind, it moved noiseless.

Someone screamed. A woman knelt in a puddle and began to rattle off prayers. A man cried that his sins had found him out, and joined her. Worthy though these actions were, I realized that in such a mass of people, folk would be trampled to death if panic smote. That was surely not what God, if He had sent this visitant, intended.

Hardly knowing what I did, I sprang up on a great iron bombard whose wagon was sunk to the axles in our street. “Hold fast!” I cried. “Be not afraid! Have faith and hold fast!”

My feeble pipings went unheard. Then Red John Hameward, the captain of the longbowmen, leaped up beside me. A merry giant, with hair like spun copper and fierce blue eyes, he had been my friend since he arrived here.

“I know not what yon thing is,” he bellowed. His voice rolled over the general babble, which died away.

“Mayhap some French trick. Or it may be friendly, which would make our fear look all the sillier. Follow me, every soldier, to meet it when it lands!”

“Magic!” cried an old man. “’Tis sorcery, and we are undone!”

“Not so,” I told him. “Sorcery cannot harm good Christians.”