For some they sunk, and many they shattered so they could fight no more.
God of battles! Was ever a battle like this in the world before?
As I listened, though I knew the words almost, by heart too, my eyes filled with tears and my soul with the desire to have been there, to have fought as they did, on the little Revenge one after another of the great Spanish ships, till at last the Revenge was riddled and helpless, and Sir Richard called to the master-gunner to sink the ship for him, but the men rebelled, and the Spaniards took what was left of ship and fighters. And Sir Richard, mortally wounded, was carried on board the flagship of his enemies, and died there, in his glory, while the captains
—praised him to his face.
With their courtly Spanish grace.
So died, never man more greatly, Sir Richard Grenville, of Stow in Devon.
The crimson and gold of sunset were streaming across the water as she ended, and we sat silent. The sailor's face was grim, as men's faces are when they are deeply stirred, but in his dark eyes burned an intensity that reserve could not bold back, and as he still stared at the girl a look shot from them that startled me like speech. She did not notice. She was shaken with the passion of the words she had repeated, and suddenly, through the sunlit, rippling silence, she spoke again.
"It's a great thing to be a Devonshire sailor," she said, solemnly. "A wonderful inheritance—it ought never to be forgotten. And as for that man—that Sir Richard Grenville Leigh—he ought to carry his name so high that nothing low or small could ever touch it. He ought never to think a thought that is not brave and fine and generous."
There was a moment's stillness and then I said, "Sally, my child, it seems to me you are laying down the law a little freely for Devonshire. You have only been here four days." And in a second she was on her usual gay terms with the world again.
"A great preacher was wasted in me," she said. "How I could have thundered at everybody else about their sins! Cousin Mary, I'm coming down—I'm all battered, knocking against the must, and the little trimmings hurt my hands."