_Oh! they hunted him down and they cut him up, and they cured one of his hams and ate it, thereby acquiring something of his mighty spirit.... And they it was who caught the great Devil of Dax and tied him up and swinged him with an ash-plant till he swore that he would haunt the woods no more._ _And here it is that you ask me for their names. Their names! Their names? Why, they gave themselves a hundred names: now this, now that, but always names of power. Thus upon that great march of theirs from Gascony into Navarre, one, on the crest of the mountains, cut himself a huge staff and cried loudly:_ _"My name is URSUS, and this is my staff DREADNOUGHT: let the people in the Valley be afraid!"_ _Whereat the other cut himself a yet huger staff, and cried out in a yet louder voice:_ _"My name is TAURUS, and this is my staff CRACK-SKULL: let them tremble who live in the Dales!"_ _And when they had said this they strode shouting down the mountain-side and conquered the town of Elizondo, where they are worshipped as gods to this day. Their names? They gave themselves a hundred names!_ _"Well, well," you say to me then, "no matter about the names: what are names? The men themselves concern me!... Tell me," you go on, "tell me where I am to find them in the flesh, and converse with them. I am in haste to see them with my own eyes."_ _It is useless to ask. They are dead. They will never again be heard upon the heaths at morning singing their happy songs: they will never more drink with their peers in the deep ingle-nooks of home. They are perished. They have disappeared. Alas! The valiant fellows!_ _But lest some list of their proud deeds and notable excursions should be lost on earth, and turn perhaps into legend, or what is worse, fade away unrecorded, this book has been got together; in which will be found now a sight they saw together, and now a sight one saw by himself, and now a sight seen only by the other. As also certain thoughts and admirations which the second or the first enjoyed, or both together: and indeed many other towns, seas, places, mountains, rivers, and men--whatever could be crammed between the covers._ _And there is an end of it._ * * * * * Many of these pages have appeared in the "Speaker," the "Pilot," the "Morning Post," the "Daily News." the "Pall Mall Magazine," the "Evening Standard," the "Morning Leader," and the "Westminster Gazette." * * * * * THE NORTH SEA