“Didst ever hear of the Content?” sang out a gunner.
“Or of the Merchant Royal?” cried another.
“Or of the Revenge?” quoth Master Jeremy Sparrow. “Go hang thyself, coward, or, if you choose, swim out to the Spaniard, and shift from thy wet doublet and hose into a sanbenito. Let the don come, shoot if he can, and land if he will! We'll singe his beard in Virginia as we did at Cales!
'The great St. Philip, the pride of the Spaniards,
Was burnt to the bottom and sunk in the sea.
the St. Andrew and eke the St. Matthew
We took in fight manfully and brought away.'
And so we'll do with this one, my masters! We'll sink her, or we'll take her and send her against her own galleons and galleasses!
'Dub-a-dub, dub-a-dub, thus strike their drums,
Tantara, tantara, the Englishman comes!'”
His great voice and great presence seized and held the attention of all. Over his doublet of rusty black he had clapped a yet rustier back and breast; on his bushy hair rode a headpiece many sizes too small; by his side was an old broadsword, and over his shoulder a pike. Suddenly, from gay hardihood his countenance changed to an expression more befitting his calling. “Our cause is just, my masters!” he cried. “We stand here not for England alone; we stand for the love of law, for the love of liberty, for the fear of God, who will not desert his servants and his cause, nor give over to Anti-Christ this virgin world. This plantation is the leaven which is to leaven the whole lump, and surely he will hide it in the hollow of his hand and in the shadow of his wing. God of battles, hear us! God of England, God of America, aid the children of the one, the saviors of the other!”
He had dropped the pike to raise his clasped hands to the blue heavens, but now he lifted it again, threw back his shoulders, and flung up his head. He laid his hand on the flagstaff, and looked up to the banner streaming in the breeze. “It looks well so high against the blue, does n't it, friends?” he cried genially. “Suppose we keep it there forever and a day!”
A cheer arose, so loud that it silenced, if it did not convince, the craven few. As for Master Edward Sharpless, he disappeared behind the line of women.
The great ship came steadily on, her white sails growing larger and larger, moment by moment, her tiers of guns more distinct and menacing, her whole aspect more defiant. Her waist seemed packed with men. But no streamers, no flag.