ong--in Italy a Ritornella, in Spain a Segeduilla, in Provence a
Pastourou, in Sussex a Glee, but an the great North Sea a Saga. And they
rolled at last into Orford Haven on the very tiptop of the highest tide
that ever has run since the Noachic Deluge; and even so, as they crossed
the bar they heard the grating of the keel. That night they sacrificed
oysters to Poseidon._

_And when they slept the Sea Lady, the silver-footed one, came up
through the waves and kissed them in their sleep; for she had seen no
such men since Achilles. Then she went back through the waves with all
her Nereids around her to where her throne is, beside her old father in
the depths of the sea._

_In their errantry they did great good. It was they that rescued
Andromeda, though she lied, as a woman will, and gave the praise to her
lover. It was they, also, who slew the Tarasque on his second
appearance, when he came in a thunderstorm across the broad bridge of
Beaucaire, all scaled in crimson and gold, forty foot long and twenty
foot high, galloping like an angry dog and belching forth flames and
smoke. They also hunted down the Bactrian Bear, who had claws like the
horns of a cow, and of whom it is written in the Sacred Books of the
East that:_

_A Bear out of Bactria came,
And he wandered all over the world,
And his eyes were aglint and aflame,
And the tip of his caudal was curled._

_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 thi