"Here die I, Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind, for that I have ended my life as a good soldier ought to do, who has fought for his country and his Queen, for honour and religion. Wherefore my soul joyfully departeth out of this body, leaving behind it an everlasting fame, as a true soldier who hath done his duty as he was bound to do. But the other of my company have done as traitors and dogs, for which they shall be reproached all their lives."
Lord Thomas Howard did not deserve this condemnation, for he wished to attempt a rescue, but his men refused to follow.
A few days after the fight a great storm from the north-west scattered the fleet, and fourteen Spanish ships went down, together with the Revenge, off St. Michael's Isle. It seemed to the English that Heaven was on the side of the Revenge, for 10,000 Spaniards perished in that storm.
Sir Richard Hawkins, correcting Raleigh's account, wrote that there were on board the Revenge "above 260 men, as by the pay-book appeareth—all which may worthily be written in our chronicles in letters of gold, in memory for all posterities, some to beware, others to imitate, the true valour of our nation in these ages."
CHAPTER VIII
JOHN DAVIS, THE HERO OF THE ARCTIC
AND PACIFIC
John Davis was born near the Gilberts' home about 1550, on the left bank of the Dart, not far from Dartmouth. His father was a yeoman owning a small farm in Sandridge, being part of the parish of Stoke Gabriel. The little inlet or harbour is called Stoke Creek, at the head of which stands the old church; in this are kept the records of the marriage of John Davis. The lordly manor-house of the Pomeroys seemed to look down from its height upon winding river and grove of oaks—the playing-ground of so many heroes—the three Gilberts, Davis, and Walter Raleigh. The boys had only to run down over two pastures and they were at the Cove, overhung with drooping boughs and trailing with dog-roses and honeysuckle. The village of Dittisham, with its plum and apple orchards, its drying nets and rocking-boats, meets the gaze as you look across the lake-like reach of the river....
Greenaway Court, the Gilberts' home, stood up among the woods to the south, and no doubt Adrian Gilbert and the Carew boys and Raleigh must often have raced in their skiffs, or listened to seamen's stories of the doings of John Hawkins in the West Indies. There was another house not far from Dittisham, where Davis as a boy may well have visited, the home of Sir John Fulford, who had two sons of the same age as the younger Gilberts, and four daughters, of whom Faith in after years became the wife of John Davis. John was of course not socially the equal of the others, but his exploits and fame levelled all distinctions as he grew older; and when he was a boy, no doubt he was a brave, modest fellow, good enough to play with his superiors.
Whether John Davis went to the new grammar-school at Totnes we do not know, but it is clear that he was sent to sea at an early age, and studied deeply the science of his profession; for by the time he was twenty-eight he was known to merchants as a captain of great skill and experience.
John returned home in 1579, passing six years at Sandridge, and no doubt enjoying many a sail up the river with Miss Faith Fulford and her sisters.