“The Abantes,” put in Mr. Grylls, “practised the direct contrary:  of whom Homer tells us that they shaved the forepart of their heads, the reason being that their enemies might not grip them by the hair in close fighting.  I regret, my dear Sir John, you never warned me that you designed Prosper for a military career.  We might have bestowed more attention on the warlike customs and operations of the ancients.”

My father sipped his wine and regarded the Vicar benevolently.  For closest friends he had two of the most irrelevant thinkers on earth and he delighted to distinguish between their irrelevancies.

“But I would not,” he continued, “have you doubt that the prime cause of our expedition is to deliver my lady from the Genoese; or believe that Prosper will press his claims unless she acknowledge them.”

“I am wondering,” said my uncle, “where you will find your other four men.”

“Prosper and I will provide them to-morrow,” my father answered, with a careless glance at me.  “And now, my friends, we have talked over-long of Corsica and nothing as yet of that companionship which brings us here—­it may be for the last time.  Priske, you may open another four bottles and leave us.  Gervase, take down the book from the cupboard and let the Vicar read to us while the light allows.”

“The marker tells me,” said the Vicar, taking the book and opening it, “that we left in the midst of Chapter 8—­On the Luce or Pike.

“Ay, and so I remember,” my uncle agreed.

The Vicar began to read—­

    “’And for your dead bait for a pike, for that you may be taught
      by one day’s going a-fishing with me or any other body that
      fishes for him; for the baiting of your hook with a dead
      gudgeon or a roach and moving it up and down the water is too
      easy a thing to take up any time to direct you to do it. 
      And yet, because I cut you short in that, I will commute for it
      by telling you that that was told me for a secret.  It is this: 
      Dissolve gum of ivy in oil of spike, and therewith anoint your
      dead bait for a pike, and then cast it into a likely place, and
      when it has lain a short time at the bottom, draw it towards
      the top of the water and so up the stream, and it is more than
      likely that you have a pike follow with more than common
      eagerness.  And some affirm that any bait anointed with the
      marrow of the thigh-bone of a heron is a great temptation to
      any fish.

    “’These have not been tried by me, but told me by a friend of
      mine, that pretended to do me a courtesy.  But if this
      direction to catch a pike thus do you no good, yet I am certain
      this direction how to roast him when he is caught is choicely
      good—­’”

“Upon my soul, brother,” interrupted my uncle Gervase, removing the pipe from his mouth, “this reads like a direction for the taking of Corsica.”