A child might have guessed that men who were lurking at such an hour in the thickets that overhung the ford of the Arguenon could be after no good; and in truth they did well to hide themselves, for it would have been hard to find, even in an age so fruitful in ruffians of high and low degree, a more villainous-looking rabble of cut-throats. On each and all of those various faces—swarthy, keen-eyed, brigand-like Spaniards; sinewy, black-haired, sallow Genoese; sturdy, yellow-bearded Flemings; and red-haired, hard-featured Scots—was stamped the same brand of savage violence, swaggering recklessness, and brutal debauchery that harmonized but too well with their blood-rusted weapons, dinted steel-caps, and slovenly dress—an unsightly mixture of tawdry finery and squalid filth.
In a word, one glance would have told the most careless observer that these wretches must be either brigands or pirates; and, in fact, they were both—land-thieves and sea-thieves by turns.
More than two years had passed since the tournament which saw the best knights of Brittany fall before the then untried lance of young Du Guesclin, and the great national storm which was then threatening had burst in all its fury. King Edward of England was marching through Picardy with thousands of English archers and men-at-arms at his back; war was raging along the whole border of Flanders; France was all tumult, disorder, and senseless division; and the Channel swarmed with French, English, Flemish, and Spanish warships, and with the countless corsairs who, while pretending to belong to one side or the other, robbed both with strict impartiality, pouncing now on Sussex and Dorset, now on Normandy and Brittany, and taking their chance of being hanged like dogs if they met a stronger force than their own.
To this class belonged the worthies now in ambush at the ford, who had come on a plundering cruise up the little Breton river at the mouth of which lay their ship. They had been just about to go back to her with their booty, when they learned by chance that a lady of rank was returning that way with a small train from a visit to the shrine of Notre Dame de Lamballe; and the captain, whose savage face and brutal look matched well with the dragon crest of his battered helmet, had at once made up his mind to await and seize this new prize, whose ransom would certainly outweigh all the other gains of their expedition put together.