the minute we get back, and we
want a dozen out of you Bideford men, and just a boy or two, and then
we'm off and away, and make our fortunes, or go to heaven.

"Our bodies in the sea so deep,
Our souls in heaven to rest!
Where valiant seamen, one and all,
Hereafter shall be blest!"

"Now," said Oxenham, "you won't let the Plymouth men say that the
Bideford men daren't follow them? North Devon against South, it is.
Who'll join? who'll join? It is but a step of a way, after all, and
sailing as smooth as a duck-pond as soon as you're past Cape Finisterre.
I'll run a Clovelly herring-boat there and back for a wager of twenty
pound, and never ship a bucketful all the way. Who'll join? Don't think
you're buying a pig in a poke. I know the road, and Salvation Yeo, here,
too, who was the gunner's mate, as well as I do the narrow seas, and
better. You ask him to show you the chart of it, now, and see if he
don't tell you over the ruttier as well as Drake himself."

On which the gaunt man pulled from under his arm a great white buffalo
horn covered with rough etchings of land and sea, and held it up to the
admiring ring.

"See here, boys all, and behold the pictur of the place, dra'ed out
so natural as ever was life. I got mun from a Portingal, down to the
Azores; and he'd pricked mun out, and pricked mun out, wheresoever he'd
sailed, and whatsoever he'd seen. Take mun in your hands now, Simon
Evans, take mun in your hands; look mun over, and I'll warrant you'll
know the way in five minutes so well as ever a shark in the seas."

And the horn was passed from hand to hand; while Oxenham, who saw that
his hearers were becoming moved, called through the open window for
a great tankard of sack, and passed that from hand to hand, after the
horn.

The school-boy, who had been devouring with eyes and ears all which
passed, and had contrived by this time to edge himself into the inner
ring, now stood face to face with the hero of the emerald crest, and got
as many peeps as he could at the wonder. But when he saw the sailors,
one after another, having turned it over a while, come forward and offer
to join Mr. Oxenham, his soul burned within him for a nearer view of
that wondrous horn, as magical in its effects as that of Tristrem, or
the enchanter's in Ariosto; and when the group had somewhat broken up,
and Oxenham was going into the tavern with his recruits, he asked boldly
for a nearer sight of the marv