human
Steady, Raymond! I would fain arrive at Botley with a dry skin, and methinks, a little less strength would avail better! Put thy back into it, my boy, rather than thine arms--so! I call to mind when I rowed down the Scheldt in a pitch-dark night, when the splash of an oar or the creaking of a thole would have loosened a hail of arrows from five hundred archers on either bank.
gpt
Tell me about it, father?
human
Nay, lad; the story will keep. But look ahead. Dost mark a row of black posts standing above the water on yonder side?
gpt
Yes; but what are they?
human
All that is left of what was once a Danish galley, the scourge of our shore. There she lies, much the same as when burned by the great Alfred, now five hundred years or more ago. May a like fate befall every foreign craft that comes to harry our coasts!