And as each ship received its willing freight,
The Moorish squadrons on their feeble rear
And their diminishing ranks with added weight,
With louder cries and more tumultuous hate
Thronged, pressing on more fiercely and more fast:
He who had been the first, was now the last.
XVI.
He fain the last would quit the hostile shore,
Who leaped the foremost on its fatal strand: