TO
  THE RAJAH SIR JAMES BROOKE, K.C.B.
  AND
   GEORGE AUGUSTUS SELWYN, D.D.
   BISHOP OF NEW ZEALAND

   THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

    By one who
         (unknown to them)
            has no
               other method
                   of expressing his admiration
               and reverence
             for their characters.

    That type of English virtue,
           at once manful and godly,
         practical and enthusiastic,
           prudent and self-sacrificing,
         which he
            has tried
                  to depict in these pages,
           they have
              exhibited in a form
             even purer and more heroic
                   than that
             in which
                 he has drest it,
         and than that
             in which it
                was exhibited
                       by the worthies
                      whom Elizabeth,
           without distinction of rank
              or age,
         gathered round her
               in the ever glorious
              wars of her great reign.

    C.
        K.

    FEBRUARY,
           1855.

    WESTWARD
        HO!
 
  CHAPTER I
  HOW MR. OXENHAM SAW THE WHITE
       BIRD

    "The hollow oak
           our palace is,
          Our heritage the sea."

    All who
          have travelled
               through the delicious scenery
                   of North Devon must
         needs know
               the little white town
             of Bideford,
           which slopes upwards
               from its broad tide-river
              paved with yellow sands,
         and many-arched old bridge
             where salmon
                  wait for autumn floods,
           toward the pleasant upland
               on the west.

    Above the town
           the hills close in,
         cushioned with deep oak woods,
         through which juts here and
              there a crag
                   of fern-fringed slate;
        below they lower,
           and open more and more
               in softly rounded knolls,
         and fertile squares of red
               and green,
           till they sink
               into the wide expanse
                   of hazy flats,
         rich salt-marshes,
           and rolling sand-hills,
         where Torridge
            joins her sister Taw,
           and both together
              flow quietly toward the broad
                  surges of the bar,
         and the everlasting thunder
               of the long Atlantic swell.

  Pleasantly the old
    town stands there,
           beneath its soft Italian sky,
         fanned day and night
               by the fresh ocean breeze,
           which forbids alike the keen
              winter frosts,
         and the fierce thunder
            heats of the midland;
        and pleasantly it
            has stood there for now,
           perhaps,
         eight hundred years
             since the first Grenville,
           cousin of the Conqueror,
         returning from the conquest
               of South Wales,
           drew round
               him trusty Saxon serfs,
         and free Norse rovers
               with their golden curls,
           and dark Silurian Britons
               from the Swansea shore,
         and all the mingled blood
              which still
                gives to the seaward folk
                       of the
                     next county their strength
                       and intellect,
           and,
         even in these levelling days,
           their peculiar beauty
               of face and form.

    But at the time whereof
         I write,
           Bideford was
               not merely
                   a pleasant country town,
         whose quay
            was haunted
                   by a few coasting craft.

    It was
           one of
               the chief ports of England;
        it furnished seven ships
              to fight the Armada:
        even more
               than a century afterwards,
           say the chroniclers,
         "it sent more vessels
               to the northern trade
             than any port in England,
           saving
         (strange juxtaposition!)

    London and Topsham,"
        and was the centre
               of a local civilization
             and enterprise,
           small perhaps
              compared with the vast efforts
                   of the present day:
        but who dare
              despise the day
                   of small things,
           if it
            has proved
                  to be the dawn
                       of mighty ones?

    And it
        is to the sea-life
               and labor of Bideford,
           and Dartmouth,
         and Topsham,
           and Plymouth
         (then a petty place),
            and many
               another little western town,
             that England
                owes the foundation
                       of her naval
                     and commercial glory.

    It was the men
           of Devon,
         the Drakes and Hawkins',
         Gilberts and Raleighs,
           Grenvilles and Oxenhams,
         and a host more of
           "forgotten worthies,"
            whom we
            shall learn one day
                  to honor as
             they deserve,
           to whom