“Too many? How many men did we take Nombre de Dios with? Seventy-three were we, and no more when we sailed out of Plymouth Sound; and before we saw the Spanish Main, half were gastados, used up, as the Dons say, with the scurvy; and in Port Pheasant Captain Rawse of Cowes fell in with us, and that gave us some thirty hands more; and with that handful, my lads, only fifty-three in all, we picked the lock of the new world! And whom did we lose but our trumpeter, who stood braying like an ass in the middle of the square, instead of taking care of his neck like a Christian? I tell you, those Spaniards are rank cowards, as all bullies are. They pray to a woman, the idolatrous rascals! and no wonder they fight like women.” “You'm right, captain,” sang out a tall gaunt fellow who stood close to him; “one westcountry-man can fight two easterlings, and an easterling can beat three Dons any day. Eh! my lads of Devon? “For O! it's the herrings and the good brown beef, And the cider and the cream so white; O! they are the making of the jolly Devon lads, For to play, and eke to fight.” “Come,” said Oxenham, “come along! Who lists? who lists? who'll make his fortune? “Oh, who will join, jolly mariners all? And who will join, says he, O! To fill his pockets with the good red goold, By sailing on the sea, O!” “Who'll list?” cried the gaunt man again; “now's your time! We've got forty men to Plymouth now, ready to sail the minute we get back, and we want a dozen out of you Bideford men, and just a boy or two, and then we'm off and away, and make our fortunes, or go to heaven. “Our bodies in the sea so deep, Our souls in heaven to rest! Where valiant seamen, one and all, Hereafter shall be blest!” “Now,” said Oxenham, “you won't let the Plymouth men say that the Bideford men daren't follow them? North Devon against South, it is. Who'll join? who'll join? It is but a step of a way, after all, and sailing as smooth as a duck-pond as soon as you're past Cape Finisterre. I'll run a Clovelly herring-boat there and back for a wager of twenty pound, and never ship a bucketful all the way. Who'll join? Don't think you're buying a pig in a poke. I know the road, and Salvation Yeo, here, too, who was the gunner's mate, as well as I do the narrow seas, and better. You ask him to show you the chart of it, now, and see if he don't tell you over the ruttier as well as Drake himself.” On which the gaunt man pulled from under his arm a great white buffalo horn covered with rough etchings of land and sea, and held it up to the admiring ring.