"Nor o'er many clean faces, I take it," saith _Father_. "Ah! did you hear, Sir," saith _Mynheer_, "of Mynheer _Heningsen's_ voyage to _Greenland_ the last year?" "I have not, _Mynheer_," saith _Father_. "Pray you, what was notable therein?" "Ah! he was not far from the coast of _Greenland_, when he found the ship go out of her course. He turned the rudder, or how you say, to guide the ship--I am not sea-learned, I ask your pardon if I mistake-- but the ship would not move. Then they found, beneath a sunken rock, and it was--how you say?--magnetical, that drew to it the iron of the ship. Then Mynheer _Heningsen_, he look to his charts, for he know no rock just there. And what think you he found? Why, two hundred years back, exactly--in the year of our Lord 1380, there were certain _Venetians_, the brothers _Zeni_, sailing in these seas, and they brought word home to _Venice_ that on this very spot, where _Heningsen_ found nothing but a sunken rock, they found a beautiful large island, where were one hundred villages, inhabited by _Christian_ people, in a state of great civility [civilisation], but so simple and guileless that hardly you can conceive. Think you! nothing now but a sunken rock." "But what name hath the island?" asks _Hal_. "No name at all. No eyes ever saw it but the brothers _Zeni_ of _Venice_." "Nay, _Mynheer_, I cry you mercy," saith _Father_ of his thoughtful fashion. "If the brothers _Zeni_ told truth (as I mean to signify no doubt), there was One that saw it, from the time when He pronounced all things very good, to the day when some convulsion of nature, whatso it were, by His commandment engulfed that fair isle in the waters. `Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did He,--in heaven, and in earth, and in the sea, and in all deep places.' Not one hair from the head of those unknown _Christians_, that were _Christians_ in truth, perished in those North waters. We shall know it when we meet them in the Land that is very far off." SELWICK HALL, OCTOBER YE XXXI. Mine hand was so weary when I was come to the last sentence afore this, that I set down no more. Truly, there was little at after that demerited the same.