'All is well, my star-shooter,' he said. 'I know my courses and my soundings, my landings and my marks, better than I know the lines upon my own hand.'
'But, good captain, surely you and your pilot know the elements of hydrography and astronomy?'
'In my head I have marked all the rocks and races. What more is there to say? Look, let me draw our path for you —'
With his finger upon an old deal table he mapped out our course, and I looked at him amazed. 'But what of the steadying and the midnighting of the stars? We are lost in this tempest, and only by expert conjecture will you find your way.'
He laughed again at my eagerness. 'Will the fixed stars or the planets lead me out from the countertides and whirlpools? I think not. Can you gaze at the sun and predict for me tempests or spouts? No, no, John Dee, you may lead a merry dance among the points of your arithmetic and geometry; but let me steer by my own light.'
I left him soon after, just as the tempest eased and the fog lifted, and I believe he still laughed after me. But who has the last laugh? You may plot a course by experience, but only knowledge brings you to a true and fitting destination. The eye may take you, sweet captain, across this little stretch of sea; but the astrolabe you condemn will impart to you the motions of the celestial orbs. It is not enough to move easily through the world: it is necessary to view it in the sun of understanding. Tell me. Is that not so?
On the fourth day at sea we came upon an island called the Holy-land (vulgarly Heiligland) and, not daring to enter the River Elve before the next morning, we struck our sails and suffered the ship to be tossed to and fro by the waves all that night — which mariners call lying at hull but which I call lying in foulness. Then on the next day we entered the river and landed at Stode, from which place we departed in a wagon, crossed the river, and travelled through many thick woods of oak to Hamburg. So began my entire winter's journey over land: by coach across marsh and sandy plains, by wagon through mountains and woods, on foot in hail and fog, by horse past lakes and groves, all the while taking my path by way of Hamburg and Leipzig, Witterburg and Dresden. I had made my way to Witterburg, quite contrary to all rules of progress and good travel, because it had been reported to me that some very curious and rare maps of the hitherto unknown world were lodged in the muniment room of the great cathedral church there. How could I not change my course, and reach out for the lands lost in the mist and darkness of our own ignorance?
Witterburg is a town filled with scholars, but I had with me a letter of introduction to the great astronomer Hegelius, a native of that place, and after we had dined together on fish and flesh he consented to accompany me to the cathedral, where his name was a key to unlock all the treasures contained therein. I might view the maps of the unknown world with ease enough, he continued, but did I not know that there was another mysterious region closer to hand? (We conversed in Latin, which I choose to translate here even though it may reach the eyes and ears of the vulgar.) He went on to tell me that the famous conjuror, Dr Faustus, lived in Witterburg about the year 1500; at my earnest entreaty, he very readily agreed to show me the house in which he had dwelt. We rose from the table after grace and, after some talk on the principles of magic, went on our way through the stinking streets of the town: yet it was a poor errand, since the old house of Faustus was no more than a fusty tenement with no relics of his art.
Hegelius, observing my downcast looks, then asked me if I would like to enter a wood adjoining the town, where it was said that Dr Faustus practised his magic art and where he died — or was rather fetched by the Devil as the sum of all his labours. Yes, I replied, yes. I had a sickness upon me from the conditions of the winter, but I was still so young that no circumstance could check me. We walked out beyond the gate of the town, where there were various heads carved out of stone, much like the bloody heads of malefactors on London Bridge, and pretty soon we came upon the boundary of the wood. I was well wrapped inside a fur coat, and with a cap upon my head lined with cats' skins after the Muscovy fashion, yet it was so cold within the domain of Faustus that I could not bring myself to speak. It was three of the clock in the afternoon, but already so dark beneath the canopy of trees that I could scarcely find the path. All the while Hegelius walked before me until he came up to the withered and blackened base of a tree, some six feet in diameter. 'Here it was,' he said, 'that Faustus stood and was taken away.' I jumped upon the remnant of this very ancient tree, and all at once the raw cold left my bones. At that same moment, also, the sickness departed from me. I do not know if the Devil had preserved some relic of his fire here, but I was exceedingly healthy and joyful when I followed Hegelius back through the gate of the town. There seemed to be some force beyond the world directing my steps, and now I wished to know everything. I wished to understand everything. Hegelius took me on to the cathedral where we looked with wonder upon certain ancient maps, but it seemed to me that I had already found a greater world within that ancient ruined tree. I say no more in this place.
And so, much enlivened and refreshed by my cure in the wood of Faustus, I travelled onwards. Following Witterburg and Dresden I came to the wooden pillar that divides the territory of the Saxon elector from the kingdom of Bohemia, and then, across sandy and stony hills, through valleys filled with snow and many stark woods, I came by coach into Prague; from Prague I travelled on to Nuremberg, being six days' journey, partly through plain, partly through rocky mountains, until we reached that city, which was seated in a barren sandy ground overcovered by frost and ice and falling snow. It was marvellous hard weather yet I was still one of the nomads, every day changing my dwelling in town and village, and living upon stinking beer, brown bread and no clean straw. I had little money upon me at this time, for Englishmen give to their younger sons less than in foreign parts they give to their bastards — but this is by the by.
From Nuremberg I travelled on to Augsburg and, having hired a horse from the city carrier there, I went into the west parts of Germany and so into the Low Countries. Passing through Lindow by the lake called Acronius, I crossed by boat to Costnetz upon the confines of Germany and Switzerland and then on to Schaffhausen. The swiftness of the Rhine made the miles seem short, but lord, what a journey was that! It almost marked the end of my quest. I hold water in no fear, knowing it to be so necessary an element in this sublunary world, but in our setting forth upon the boat it inclined so much on the other side that it was half full of the river; we sat wet to the knees, and the water still came beating in more and more. But there was worse. There was a great fall of the waters over a rock some fifty cubits downwards, passing with huge noise and ending all in foam, and I had a panic fear that we would be drawn that way and lost within the mighty turbulence. Yet I remembered Faustus, and prayed out loud to my own good genius or daemon; at that instant the boatman took off his ragged apparel and, with the rope of the vessel in his hands, swam towards the landing stairs while dragging the boat behind him. I took up the oar and, with the assistance of another traveller, we helped steer our vessel towards the land while ever being in danger of sinking: I believed myself close to dying then, but the knowledge of it seemed only to increase my strength. But at last we came upon the shore, and were tumbled out upon the dry land. What a restoration that was; I felt like a giant who had somehow survived the Flood. I put up my hands to pray, but all the time I had a vision of myself in the wood with a light shining about me; I tried to murmur the words of thanksgiving after danger, but I was as dumb as if I was lost in some great amazing. Then a dog barked and I recovered myself. It was time to move on, for I could not abide loitering: my true destination was only a little way before me.