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If an astrologer or an Arabian enchanter could say to a man, ‘‘Beware of this or that, for it is a thing conceived of the Devil to work thy ruin,” there would be reason for studying the stars or smiting the sand. And this, indeed, they do, according to the old tales. But if a sailor seek out an astrologer to learn things that shall profit him, he is more likely to find a man grown foolish by much study, who will stroke his chin sagely and say, “Come, let us look into this matter. Under Capricorn are all diseases in the knees and hams, leprosies, itch and scales and schirrous tumors, fallow grounds and barren fields, ox-houses and cow-houses, low dark places near the ground, and places where sails and materials for ships be laid.” And while he talks of fixed angles and of the Lord of the Ascendant being in the fourth week, some small unsuspected thing may be the very egg on which the Devil is sitting like an old black hen to hatch forth a general calamity.

Thus certain incidents that shortly thereafter happened are to the point, for although they appeared of little moment at the time, they turned the tide of men’s lives and made a stir that has to do with the current of my tale.

Now the men of the Rose of Devon sighted a sail at high noon when they were a week on their way south, and though she showed her heels and ran, and though