LIN.  With all my heart. [Exit LINGUA.

PHA.[230] Hot youths, I protest:  saw you those warlike preparations?

MEN, Lately, my lords, I sped into the army;
But O, ’tis far beyond my reach of wit
Or strength of utterance to describe their forces.

COM.  SEN.  Go to; speak what thou canst.

MEN.  Upon the right hand of a spacious hill
Proud Visus marshalleth a puissant army,
Three thousand eagles strong, whose valiant captain
Is Jove’s swift thunder-bearer, that same bird,
That hoist up Ganymede from the Trojan plains. 
The vanguard strengthened with a wondrous flight
Of falcons, haggards, hobbies, terselets,[231]
Lanards and goshawks, sparhawks, and ravenous birds. 
The rearward granted to Auditus’ charge,
Is stoutly follow’d with an impetuous herd
Of stiff-neck’d bulls and many horn-mad stags,
Of the best head the forest can afford.

PHA.  I promise you, a fearful troop of soldiers.

MEN.  Right opposite stands Tactus, strongly mann’d
With three thousand bristled urchens[232] for his pikemen,
Four hundred tortoises for elephants;
Besides a monstrous troop of ugly spiders,
Within an ambushment he hath commanded
Of their own guts to spin a cordage fine,
Whereof t’have fram’d a net (O wondrous work!)
That, fastened by the concave of the moon,
Spreads down itself to th’earth’s circumference.

MEM.  ’Tis very strange; I cannot remember the like engine at any time.

MEN.  Nay more, my lord, the masks[233] are made so strong,
That I myself upon them scal’d the heavens,
And boldly walk’d about the middle region,
Where, in the province of the meteors,
I saw the cloudy shops of hail and rain,
Garners of snow, and crystals full of dew;
Rivers of burning arrows, dens of dragons,
Huge beams of flames, and spears like firebrands. 
Where I beheld hot Mars and Mercury,
With rackets made of spheres and balls of stars,
Playing at tennis for a tun of Nectar. 
And that vast gaping of the firmament
Under the southern pole is nothing else
But the great hazard[234] of their tennis-court;
The Zodiac is the line; the shooting stars,
Which in an eye-bright evening seem to fall,
Are nothing but the balls they lose at bandy. 
Thus, having took my pleasure with those sights,
By the same net I went up I descended.

COM.  SEN.  Well, sirrah, to what purpose tends this stratagem?

MEN.  None know directly; but I think it is
T’entrap the eagles, when the battles join.

PHA.  Who takes Tactus his part?

MEN.  Under the standard of thrice-hardy Tactus,
Thrice-valiant Gustus leads his warlike forces;
An endless multitude of desperate apes;
Five hundred marmosets and long-tail’d monkeys,
All trained to the field, and nimble gunners.

PHA.  I imagine there’s old moving[235] amongst them:  methinks a handful of nuts would turn them all out of their soldiers’ coats.