noon
I hope no CIVIL people amongst us will turn barbarians , now these barbarians begin to be civilized . '' * * Fuller , p. 398 . With which quip against the Anabaptists of his day , Fuller ends his story ; and I leave him to set forth how Amyas , in fear of these same Scythians and heathens , rode out of Plymouth on a right good horse , in his full suit of armor , carrying lance and sword , and over and above two great dags , or horse-pistols ; and behind him Salvation Yeo , and five or six north Devon men -LRB- who had served with him in Ireland , and were returning on furlough -RRB- , clad in head-pieces and quilted jerkins , each man with his pike and sword , and Yeo with arquebuse and match , while two sumpter ponies carried the baggage of this formidable troop . They pushed on as fast as they could , through Tavistock , to reach before nightfall Lydford , where they meant to sleep ; but what with buying the horses , and other delays , they had not been able to start before noon ; and night fell just as they reached the frontiers of the enemy 's country . A dreary place enough it was , by the wild glare of sunset . A high tableland of heath , banked on the right by the crags and hills of Dartmoor , and sloping away to the south and west toward the foot of the great cone of Brent-Tor , which towered up like an extinct volcano -LRB- as some say that it really is -RRB- , crowned with the tiny church , the votive offering of some Plymouth merchant of old times , who vowed in sore distress to build a church to the Blessed Virgin on the first point of English land which he should see . Far away , down those waste slopes , they could see the tiny threads of blue smoke rising from the dens of the Gubbings ; and more than once they called a halt , to examine whether distant furze-bushes and ponies might not be the patrols of an advancing army .