tripping in withes,
and being eaten up with creeping things, from morn till night."

"But remember, too," said Jack, "how they told us to beware of the
Amazons."

"What, Jack, afraid of a parcel of women?"

"Why not?" said Jack, "I wouldn't run from a man, as you know; but a
woman--it's not natural, like. They must be witches or devils. See how
the Caribs feared them. And there were men there without necks, and with
their eyes in their breasts, they said. Now how could a Christian tackle
such customers as them?"

"He couldn't cut off their heads, that's certain; but, I suppose, a poke
in the ribs will do as much for them as for their neighbors."

"Well," said Jack, "if I fight, let me fight honest flesh and blood,
that's all, and none of these outlandish monsters. How do you know but
that they are invulnerable by art-magic?"

"How do you know that they are? And as for the Amazons," said Cary,
"woman's woman, all the world over. I'll bet that you may wheedle them
round with a compliment or two, just as if they were so many burghers'
wives. Pity I have not a court-suit and a Spanish hat. I would have
taken an orange in one hand and a handkerchief in the other, gone all
alone to them as ambassador, and been in a week as great with Queen
Blackfacealinda as ever Raleigh is at Whitehall."

"Gentlemen!" said Yeo, "where you go, I go; and not only I, but every
man of us, I doubt not; but we have lost now half our company, and spent
our ammunition, so we are no better men, were it not for our swords,
than these naked heathens round us. Now it was, as you all know, by the
wonder and noise of their ordnance (let alone their horses, which is a
break-neck beast I put no faith in) that both Cortez and Pizarro, those
imps of Satan, made their golden conquests, with which if we could have
astounded the people of Manoa--"

"Having first found the said people," laughed Amyas. "It is like the
old fable. Every craftsman thinks his own trade the one pillar of the
commonweal."

"Well! your worship," quoth Yeo, "it may be that being a gunner I
overprize guns. But it don't need slate and pencil to do this sum--Are
forty men without shot as good as eighty with?"

"Thou art right, old fellow, right enough, and I was only jesting for
very sorrow, and must needs laugh about it lest I weep about it. Our
chance is over, I believe, though I dare not confess as much to the
men."

"Sir," said Yeo, "I have a feeling on me that the Lord's h