reak through the Spanish line, determined, with
a kind of heroic desperation, to sustain alone the conflict with a
whole fleet of fifty-seven sail, and to confront all extremities rather
than strike his colors. From three o'clock in the afternoon till
day-break he resisted, by almost incredible efforts of valor, all the
force which could be brought to bear against him, and fifteen times beat
back the boarding parties from his deck. At length, when all his bravest
had fallen, and he himself was disabled by many wounds; his powder also
being exhausted, his small-arms lost or broken, and his ship a perfect
wreck, he proposed to his gallant crew to sink her, that no trophy might
remain to the enemy. But this proposal, though applauded by several, was
overruled by the majority: the Revenge struck to the Spaniards; and two
days after, her brave commander died on board their admiral's ship of
his glorious wounds, "with a joyful and quiet mind," as he expressed
himself, and admired by his enemies themselves for his high spirit and
invincible resolution. This was the first English ship of any
considerable size captured by the Spaniards during the whole war, and it
did them little good; for, besides that the vessel had been shattered to
pieces, and sunk a few days after with two hundred Spanish sailors on
board, the example of heroic self-devotion set by sir Richard Grenville
long continued in the hour of battle to strike awe and terror to their
hearts.

Thomas Cavendish, elated by the splendid success of that first
expedition in which, with three slender barks of insignificant size
carrying only one hundred and twenty-three persons of every degree, he
had plundered the whole coast of New Spain and Peru, burned Paita and
Acapulco, and captured a Spanish admiral of seven hundred tons, besides
many other vessels taken or burned;--then crossed the great South Sea,
and circumnavigated the globe in the shortest time in which that exploit
had yet been performed;--set sail again in August 1591 on a second
voyage. But this time, when his far greater force and more adequate
preparations of every kind seemed to promise results still more
profitable and glorious, scarce any thing but disasters awaited him. He
took indeed the town of Santos in Brazil, which was an acquisition of
some importance; but delaying here too long, he arrived at a wrong
season in the Straits of Magellan, and was compelled to endure the
winter of that inhospitable cli