that has passed to his mother, from whom he had never hidden anything
in his life, save only that sea-fever; and that only because he foreknew
that it would give her pain; and because, moreover, being a prudent and
sensible lad, he knew that he was not yet old enough to go, and that, as
he expressed it to her that afternoon, "there was no use hollaing till
he was out of the wood."

So he goes up between the rich lane-banks, heavy with drooping ferns and
honeysuckle; out upon the windy down toward the old Court, nestled
amid its ring of wind-clipt oaks; through the gray gateway into the
homeclose; and then he pauses a moment to look around; first at the wide
bay to the westward, with its southern wall of purple cliffs; then at
the dim Isle of Lundy far away at sea; then at the cliffs and downs of
Morte and Braunton, right in front of him; then at the vast yellow sheet
of rolling sand-hill, and green alluvial plain dotted with red cattle,
at his feet, through which the silver estuary winds onward toward the
sea. Beneath him, on his right, the Torridge, like a land-locked lake,
sleeps broad and bright between the old park of Tapeley and the charmed
rock of the Hubbastone, where, seven hundred years ago, the Norse rovers
landed to lay siege to Kenwith Castle, a mile away on his left hand; and
not three fields away, are the old stones of "The Bloody Corner,"
where the retreating Danes, cut off from their ships, made their last
fruitless stand against the Saxon sheriff and the valiant men of Devon.
Within that charmed rock, so Torridge boatmen tell, sleeps now the old
Norse Viking in his leaden coffin, with all his fairy treasure and his
crown of gold; and as the boy looks at the spot, he fancies, and almost
hopes, that the day may come when he shall have to do his duty against
the invader as boldly as the men of Devon did then. And past him, far
below, upon the soft southeastern breeze, the stately ships go sliding
out to sea. When shall he sail in them, and see the wonders of the deep?
And as he stands there with beating heart and kindling eye, the cool
breeze whistling through his long fair curls, he is a symbol, though he
knows it not, of brave young England longing to wing its way out of its
island prison, to discover and to traffic, to colonize and to civilize,
until no wind can sweep the earth which does not bear the echoes of an
English voice. Patience, young Amyas! Thou too shalt forth, and westward
ho, beyond thy w