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!"

XI

And the night went down, and the sun smiled out far over the summer sea,

And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay round us all in a ring;

But they dared not touch us again, for they fear'd that we still could sting,

So they watch'd what the end would be.

And we had not fought them in vain,
But in perilous plight were we,

Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain,

And half of the rest of us maim'd for life

In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife; And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold,

And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powder was all of it spent;

And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side; But Sir Richard cried in his English pride,

"We have fought such a fight for a day and a night

As may never be fought again!

We have won great glory, my men!

And a day less or more

At sea or ashore,

We die-does it matter when?

Sink me the ship, Master Gunner-sink her, split her in twain!

Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!"

XII

And the gunner said “Ay, ay,” but the seamen made reply: "We have children, we have wives,

And the Lord hath spared our lives.

We will make the Spaniard promise, if we yield, to let us

go;

We shall live to fight again and to strike another blow." And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded to the foe.

XIII

And the stately Spanish men to their flagship bore him then,

Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught

at last,

And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign

grace;

But he rose upon their decks, and he cried:

"I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man

and true;

I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do:

With a joyful spirit I Sir Richard Grenville die!"
And he fell upon their decks, and he died.

XIV

And they stared at the dead that had been so valiant and true,

And had holden the power and glory of Spain so cheap That he dared her with one little ship and his English

few;

Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught they knew, But they sank his body with honor down into the deep, And they mann'd the Revenge with a swarthier alien

crew,

And away she sail'd with her loss and long'd for her own; When a wind from the lands they had ruin'd awoke from sleep,

And the water began to heave and the weather to moan,
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.

59

HERVÉ RIEL 1

ROBERT BROWNING

I

On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two,
Did the English fight the French,-woe to France!
And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter through the
blue,

Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue,

Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo 2 on the Rance, With the English fleet in view.

II

'Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor in full chase;

First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, Damfreville;

Close on him fled, great and small,

Twenty-two good ships in all;

And they signalled to the place

"Help the winners of a race!

Give us guidance, give us harbor, take us quick—or, quicker still,

Here's the English can and will!"

1. This poem, first published in 1871, Browning sold to the Cornhill Magazine for £100, which he gave to the relief fund for the sufferers after the siege of Paris by the Prussians. The story is true, except that, according to some authorities, Hervé Riel asked for a permanent leave of absence.

2. Saint Malo. A port on the northwestern coast of France.

III

Then the pilots of the place put out brisk and leapt on board;

"Why, what hope or chance have ships like these to

pass?" laughed they:

"Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage scarred and scored,

Shall the Formidable here with her twelve and eighty guns Think to make the river-mouth by the single narrow

way,

Trust to enter where 'tis ticklish for a craft of twenty

tons,

And with flow at full beside?

Now, 'tis slackest ebb of tide. Reach the mooring? Rather say, While rock stands or water runs, Not a ship will leave the bay!"

IV

Then was called a council straight.

Brief and bitter the debate:

"Here's the English at our heels; would you have them

take in tow

All that's left us of the fleet, linked together stern and

bow,

For a prize to Plymouth Sound?

Better run the ships aground!"

(Ended Damfreville his speech.) "Not a minute more to wait! Let the Captains all and each

Shove ashore, then blow up, burn the vessels on the

beach!

France must undergo her fate.