



Produced by Donald Lainson





WESTWARD HO!


by Charles Kingsley



TO

THE RAJAH SIR JAMES BROOKE, K.C.B.

AND

GEORGE AUGUSTUS SELWYN, D.D.

BISHOP OF NEW ZEALAND


THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED


By one who (unknown to them) has no other method of expressing his
admiration and reverence for their characters.

That type of English virtue, at once manful and godly, practical and
enthusiastic, prudent and self-sacrificing, which he has tried to depict
in these pages, they have exhibited in a form even purer and more
heroic than that in which he has drest it, and than that in which it was
exhibited by the worthies whom Elizabeth, without distinction of rank or
age, gathered round her in the ever glorious wars of her great reign.

C. K.

FEBRUARY, 1855.



CONTENTS


INTRODUCTION

I.     HOW MR. OXENHAM SAW THE WHITE BIRD

II.    HOW AMYAS CAME HOME THE FIRST TIME

III.   OF TWO GENTLEMEN OF WALES, AND HOW THEY HUNTED WITH THE HOUNDS, AND
           YET RAN WITH THE DEER

IV.    THE TWO WAYS OF BEING CROST IN LOVE

V.     CLOVELLY COURT IN THE OLDEN TIME

VI.    THE COMBES OF THE FAR WEST

VII.   THE TRUE AND TRAGICAL HISTORY OF MR. JOHN OXENHAM OF PLYMOUTH

VIII.  HOW THE NOBLE BROTHERHOOD OF THE ROSE WAS FOUNDED

IX.    HOW AMYAS KEPT HIS CHRISTMAS DAY

X.     HOW THE MAYOR OF BIDEFORD BAITED HIS HOOK WITH HIS OWN FLESH

XI.    HOW EUSTACE LEIGH MET THE POPE'S LEGATE

XII.   HOW BIDEFORD BRIDGE DINED AT ANNERY HOUSE

XIII.  HOW THE GOLDEN HIND CAME HOME AGAIN

XIV.   HOW SALVATION YEO SLEW THE KING OF THE GUBBINGS

XV.    HOW MR. JOHN BRIMBLECOMBE UNDERSTOOD THE NATURE OF AN OATH

XVI.   THE MOST CHIVALROUS ADVENTURE OF THE GOOD SHIP ROSE

XVII.  HOW THEY CAME TO BARBADOS, AND FOUND NO MEN THEREIN

XVIII. HOW THEY TOOK THE PEARLS AT MARGARITA

XIX.   WHAT BEFELL AT LA GUAYRA

XX.    SPANISH BLOODHOUNDS AND ENGLISH MASTIFFS

XXI.   HOW THEY TOOK THE COMMUNION UNDER THE TREE AT HIGUEROTE

XXII.  THE INQUISITION IN THE INDIES

XXIII. THE BANKS OF THE META

XXIV.  HOW AMYAS WAS TEMPTED OF THE DEVIL

XXV.   HOW THEY TOOK THE GOLD-TRAIN

XXVI.  HOW THEY TOOK THE GREAT GALLEON

XXVII. HOW SALVATION YEO FOUND HIS LITTLE MAID AGAIN

XXVIII.HOW AMYAS CAME HOME THE THIRD TIME

XXIX.  HOW THE VIRGINIA FLEET WAS STOPPED BY THE QUEEN'S COMMAND

XXX.   HOW THE ADMIRAL JOHN HAWKINS TESTIFIED AGAINST CROAKERS

XXXI.  THE GREAT ARMADA

XXXII. HOW AMYAS THREW HIS SWORD INTO THE SEA

XXXIII. HOW AMYAS LET THE APPLE FALL




WESTWARD HO!


CHAPTER I


HOW MR. OXENHAM SAW THE WHITE BIRD

     "The hollow oak our palace is,
        Our heritage the sea."

All who have travelled through the delicious scenery of North Devon must
needs know the little white town of Bideford, which <DW72>s upwards from
its broad tide-river paved with yellow sands, and many-arched old bridge
where salmon wait for autumn floods, toward the pleasant upland on the
west. Above the town the hills close in, cushioned with deep oak woods,
through which juts here and there a crag of fern-fringed slate; below
they lower, and open more and more in softly rounded knolls, and fertile
squares of red and green, till they sink into the wide expanse of hazy
flats, rich salt-marshes, and rolling sand-hills, where Torridge joins
her sister Taw, and both together flow quietly toward the broad surges
of the bar, and the everlasting thunder of the long Atlantic swell.
Pleasantly the old town stands there, beneath its soft Italian sky,
fanned day and night by the fresh ocean breeze, which forbids alike the
keen winter frosts, and the fierce thunder heats of the midland; and
pleasantly it has stood there for now, perhaps, eight hundred years
since the first Grenville, cousin of the Conqueror, returning from the
conquest of South Wales, drew round him trusty Saxon serfs, and free
Norse rovers with their golden curls, and dark Silurian Britons from
the Swansea shore, and all the mingled blood which still gives to the
seaward folk of the next county their strength and intellect, and, even
in these levelling days