the crow with both their hands close to mine, striving to haul it from
me; then the boy might have knocked them down with much ease, but that
his heart failed him.' The master was by this time so far recovered that
he was able to join the other two, so that Lyde fought for his life
against the three. The boy at one moment, thinking him overborne, 'cried
out for fear. Then I said, "Do you cry, you villain, now I am in such a
condition? Come quickly and knock this man on the head that hath hold of
my left arm." The boy took some courage, but struck so faintly that he
missed his blow, which greatly enraged me; and I, feeling the Frenchman
about my middle hang very heavy, said to the boy, "Go round the binikle
and knock down that man that hangeth on my back"; so the boy did strike
him one blow on the head, and he went out on deck staggering to and
fro.' After a further tremendous effort, Lyde killed one of the three
struggling with him, and the two others then begged for quarter; and at
last he set sail for Topsham, with five living prisoners under hatches.
But his troubles were not yet all passed. Exhausted as he was, he dared
not rest, and suffered from want of sleep, bad weather, and, when he
reached home, a cold welcome. Arrived at Topsham Bar, he had no English
colours to run up, and the pilot he signalled feared to come out. Lyde
did not dare to bring in the ship by himself at night, and was blown off
the coast, so that he had the further labour of getting close to the bar
a second time. In the end he did succeed in getting safely home.

Just beyond Topsham the little river Clyst joins the Exe. It has given
names to a surprising number of villages and manors, considering the
shortness of its course--Clyst St Mary, Clyst St Laurence, Honiton
Clyst, and so on. At Clyst St George a small estate used to be held on
the curious tenure of 'the annual tender of an ivory bow.' About two
miles east of the river the land begins to slope upwards to the moorland
of Woodbury Common, and on one part of the heath are the remains of an
ancient entrenchment called Woodbury Castle. 'No castle at all, built
with little cost,' says Westcote, 'without either lime or hewn stone:
only a hasty fortification made of mother-earth for the present to serve
a turn for need, with plain ditches, the Saxons' usual structure, who
commonly lay _sub dio_, with no other shelter or coverture than the
starry canopy.'

Woodbury and Lympstone--a village on t