And Sir Richard said again: “We be all good English
men.
Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the
devil,
For I never turn’d my back upon Don or devil yet.”
V.
Sir Richard spoke and he laugh’d, and we roar’d
a
hurrah, and so
The little Revenge ran on sheer into the heart of
the
foe,
With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety
sick
below;
For half of their fleet to the right and half to the
left
were seen,
And the little Revenge ran on thro’ the long
sea-lane
between.
VI.
Thousands of their soldiers look’d down from
their
decks and laugh’d,
Thousands of their seamen made mock at the mad little
craft
Running on and on, till delay’d
By their mountain-like San Philip that, of fifteen
hundred
tons,
And up-shadowing high above us with her yawning
tiers of guns,
Took the breath from our sails, and we stay’d.
VII.
And while now the great San Philip hung above us
like a cloud
Whence the thunderbolt will fall
Long and loud,
Four galleons drew away
From the Spanish fleet that day,
And two upon the larboard and two upon the starboard
lay,
And the battle-thunder broke from them all.
VIII.
But anon the great San Philip, she bethought herself
and went
Having that within her womb that had left her ill
content;
And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought
us
hand to hand,
For a dozen times they came with their pikes and
musqueteers,
And a dozen times we shook ’em off as a dog
that
shakes his ears
When he leaps from the water to the land.
IX.
And the sun went down, and the stars came out far
over the summer sea,
But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and
the fifty-three.
Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built
galleons came,
Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-
thunder and flame;
Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with
her dead and her shame.
For some were sunk and many were shattered, and so
could fight us no more—
God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the
world
before?
X.
For he said “Fight on! fight on!”
Tho’ his vessel was all but a wreck;
And it chanced that, when half of the short summer
night was gone,
With a grisly wound to be drest he had left the deck,
But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly
dead,
And himself he was wounded again in the side and the
head,
And he said “Fight on! fight on!”