e
covered the embarkation. Thus he lost the wind. He mustered on board his
flagship scarce a hundred sound men. Soon he was hemmed in. The
Foresight stayed near him for two hours, and battled bravely, but
finally had to retire. For fifteen hours he fought the squadron of
Seville, five great galleons, with ten more to back them. Crippled by
many wounds, he kept the upper deck. Nothing was to be seen but the
naked hull of a ship, and that almost a skeleton. She had received 800
shot of great artillery, some under water. The deck was covered with the
limbs and carcases of forty valiant men. The rest were all wounded and
painted with their own blood. Her masts had been shot overboard. All her
tackle was cut asunder. Her upper works were razed and level with the
water. She was incapable of receiving any direction or motion, except
that given her by the billows. Three Spanish galleons had been burnt.
One had been run aground to save her company. A thousand Spaniards had
been slain or drowned. Grenville wished to blow up his shattered hulk. A
majority of the handful of survivors preferred to accept the Spanish
Admiral's terms. They were that all lives should be spared, the crew be
sent to England, and the better sort be released on payment of ransom.
Grenville was conveyed on board a Spanish galley, where he was
chivalrously treated. He lingered till September 13 or 14 in sore pain,
which he disdained to betray. Jan Huygen van Linschoten, a Dutch
adventurer, who was at the time in the island of Terceira, heard of the
struggle both from the Spaniards and from one of the English prisoners.
He describes it briefly in a diary he kept. He was told how the English
admiral would amaze the Spanish captains by crushing wine-glasses
between his teeth, after he had tossed off the contents. The fragments
he swallowed, while the blood ran out of his mouth. It is Linschoten,
not Ralegh, who has preserved Grenville's dying words: 'Here die I,
Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind, for that I have ended
my life, as a true soldier ought, that hath fought for his country,
Queen, religion, and honour.'

[Sidenote: _Ralegh's Narrative._]

[Sidenote: _An Indictment of Spain._]

Ralegh might have met Grenville's fate. He took up the pen to celebrate
his kinsman's heroism, and to point the moral for England of the feats
valour like his could accomplish against Spain. His _Report of the Truth
of the Fight about the Isles of Azores_ was f