e guadagno, Messer! health
and gain to you, sir! Health alone will not go down with the greedy
curmudgeons; they over and above must wish for gain, with a pox to 'em; ay,
and for the fine crowns, or scudi di Guadaigne; whence, heaven be praised!
it happens many a time that the silly wishers and woulders are baulked, and
get neither.

Now, my lads, as you hope for good health, cough once aloud with lungs of
leather; take me off three swingeing bumpers; prick up your ears; and you
shall hear me tell wonders of the noble and good Pantagruel.

THE FOURTH BOOK.

Chapter 4.I.

How Pantagruel went to sea to visit the oracle of Bacbuc, alias the Holy
Bottle.

In the month of June, on Vesta's holiday, the very numerical day on which
Brutus, conquering Spain, taught its strutting dons to truckle under him,
and that niggardly miser Crassus was routed and knocked on the head by the
Parthians, Pantagruel took his leave of the good Gargantua, his royal
father. The old gentleman, according to the laudable custom of the
primitive Christians, devoutly prayed for the happy voyage of his son and
his whole company, and then they took shipping at the port of Thalassa.
Pantagruel had with him Panurge, Friar John des Entomeures, alias of the
Funnels, Epistemon, Gymnast, Eusthenes, Rhizotome, Carpalin, cum multis
aliis, his ancient servants and domestics; also Xenomanes, the great
traveller, who had crossed so many dangerous roads, dikes, ponds, seas, and
so forth, and was come some time before, having been sent for by Panurge.

For certain good causes and considerations him thereunto moving, he had
left with Gargantua, and marked out, in his great and universal
hydrographical chart, the course which they were to steer to visit the
Oracle of the Holy Bottle Bacbuc. The number of ships were such as I
described in the third book, convoyed by a like number of triremes, men of
war, galleons, and feluccas, well-rigged, caulked, and stored with a good
quantity of Pantagruelion.

All the officers, droggermen, pilots, captains, mates, boatswains,
midshipmen, quartermasters, and sailors, met in the Thalamege, Pantagruel's
principal flag-ship, which had in her stern for her ensign a huge large
bottle, half silver well polished, the other half gold enamelled with
carnation; whereby it was easy to guess that white and red were the colours
of the noble travellers, and that they went for the word of the Bottle.

On the stern of the s