disposition) yielded that all their lives should be saved, the company sent for England, and the better sort to pay such reasonable ransom as their estate would bear, and in the mean season to be free from galley or imprisonment.  To this he so much the better condescended as well, as I have said, for fear of further loss and mischief to themselves, as also for the desire he had to recover Sir Richard Grenville, whom for his notable valour he seemed greatly to honour and admire.

“When this answer was returned, and that safety of life was promised, the common sort being now at the end of their peril the most drew back from Sir Richard and the Master Gunner, (it) being no hard matter to dissuade men from death to life.  The Master Gunner finding himself and Sir Richard thus prevented and mastered by the greater number, would have slain himself with a sword, had he not been by force with-held and locked into his cabin.  Then the General sent many boats aboard the Revenge, and divers of our men fearing Sir Richard’s disposition, stole away aboard the General and other ships.  Sir Richard thus over-matched was sent unto by Alfonso Bacan to remove out of the Revenge, the ship being marvellous unsavoury, filled with blood and bodies of dead, and wounded men, like a slaughterhouse.

“Sir Richard answered he might do with his body what he list, for he esteemed it not.  And as he was carried out of the ship he swooned, and reviving again desired the company to pray for him.

“The General used Sir Richard with all humanity, and left nothing unattempted that tended to his recovery, highly commending his valour and worthiness, and greatly bewailing the danger in which he was, being unto them a rare spectacle, and a resolution seldom approved, to see one ship turn toward so many enemies, to endure the charge and boarding of so many huge Armadas, and to resist and repel the assaults and entries of so many soldiers.

“There were slain and drowned in this fight well near one thousand of the enemies, and two special commanders. . . . besides divers others of special account.

“Sir Richard died as it is said, the second or third day aboard the General and was by them greatly bewailed.  What became of his body, whether it were buried in the sea or on the land, we known not.  The comfort that remaineth to his friends is, that he hath ended his life honourably in respect of the reputation won to his nation and country and of the same to his posterity, and that being dead, he hath not outlived his own honour.”

This gallant fight of the little Revenge against the huge navy of Spain is one of the great things in the story of the sea; that is why I have chosen it out of all that Sir Walter wrote to give you as a specimen of English prose in Queen Elizabeth’s time.  As long as brave deeds are remembered, it will be told how Sir Richard Grenville “walled round with wooden castles on the wave” bid defiance