to the might and pride of Spain, “hoping the splendour of some lucky star."* The fight was a hopeless one from the very beginning, but it was as gallant a one as ever took place.  Even his foes were forced to admire Sir Richard’s dauntless courage, for when he was carried aboard Don Alfonso’s ship “the captain and gentlemen went to visit him, and to comfort him in his hard fortune, wondering at his courageous stout heart for that he showed not any sign of faintness nor changing of colour.  But feeling the hour of death to approach, he spake these words in Spanish and said, ’Here die I, Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind, for that I have ended my life as a true soldier ought to do, and hath fought for his country, Queen, religion, and honour, whereby my soul most joyfully departeth out of this body, and shall always leave behind it an everlasting fame of a valiant and true soldier that hath done his duty as he was bound to do.’  When he had finished these or other like words he gave up the Ghost, with great and stout courage, and no man could perceive any true signs of heaviness in him."**

Gervase Markham. *Linschoten’s Large Testimony in Hakluyt’s Voyages.

Poets of the time made ballads of this fight.  Raleigh wrote of it as you have just read, and in our own day the great laureate Lord Tennyson made the story live again in his poem The Revenge.  Tennyson tells how after the fight a great storm arose: 

“And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew
And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earthquake grew,
Till it smote on their hulls and their sails
and their masts and their flags,
And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shatter’d navy of Spain. 
And the little Revenge herself went down by the island crags
To be lost evermore in the main.”

So neither the gallant captain nor his little ship were led home to the triumph of Spain.

It is interesting to remember that had it not been for the caprice of the Queen, Raleigh himself would have been in Sir Richard Grenville’s place.  For he had orders to go on this voyage, but at the last moment he was recalled, and Sir Richard was sent instead.

Chapter LI RALEIGH—­“THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD”

SOON after the fight with the Revenge, the King of Spain made ready more ships to attack England.  Raleigh then persuaded Queen Elizabeth that it would be well to be before hand with the Spaniards and attack their ships at Panama.  So to this end a fleet was gathered together.  But the Queen sent only two ships, various gentlemen provided others, and Raleigh spent every penny of his own that he could gather in fitting out the remainder.  He was himself chosen Admiral of the Fleet.  So at length he started on an expedition after his own heart.