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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 slopes 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, their peculiar beauty of face and form.
But at the time whereof I write, Bideford was not merely a pleasant country town, whose quay was haunted by a few coasting craft. It was one of the chief ports of England; it furnished seven ships to fight the Armada: even more than a century afterwards, say the chroniclers, "it sent more vessels to the northern trade than any port in England, saving (strange juxtaposition!) London and Topsham," and was the centre of a local civilization and enterprise, small perhaps compared with the vast efforts of the present day: but who dare despise the day of small things, if it has proved to be the dawn of mighty ones? And it is to the