They kidnapped holy priests
(for otherwise they came not), and taking them aboard their ships,
they sailed to their several ports. Then they forced the unwilling
Fathers to unite them in holy wedlock to the maidens of their choice.
To many havens they sailed, and in every one they had an only wife.
They made their priests inscribe texts from the holy Gospel on pieces
of parchment made from the skin of hogs, and instead of robbing
people, as of yore, they paid with the word of Holy Scripture for the
booty they levied. This, they said, was infinitely more precious than
any worldly dross. All hail to the memory of my gallant maternal
ancestor, who, when surfeited with the caresses of his Fifine of
Normandy, flew to the arms of Mercedes of Andalusia. Next, perhaps,
he appeared in Greenland, blubbering with an Esquimau heiress. Anon,
you might have found him in Columbia in the tolls of a princely
Pocahontas. In Mexico he ate the ardent chile from the tender hand of
his Guadalupita, and later on he was on time at a five o'clock family
tea party in Japan, or he might have kotowed pidgin-love to a
trusting maid in a China town of fair Cathay. In Africa--oh,
horror!--here I draw the veil, for in my mind's eye I behold a burly
negro (yes, sah!) staring at me out of fishy, blue eyes.
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