ns who in the summer morning sate 'combing
their long hair for death' in the passes of Thermopylae, have earned a
more lofty estimate for themselves than this one crew of modern
Englishmen.

In August 1591, Lord Thomas Howard, with six English line-of-battle
ships, six victuallers, and two or three pinnaces, was lying at anchor
under the Island of Florez. Light in ballast and short of water, with
half his men disabled by sickness, Howard was unable to pursue the
aggressive purpose on which he had been sent out. Several of the ships'
crews were on shore: the ships themselves 'all pestered and rommaging,'
with everything out of order. In this condition they were surprised by a
Spanish fleet consisting of 53 men-of-war. Eleven out of the twelve
English ships obeyed the signal of the admiral, to cut or weigh their
anchors and escape as they might. The twelfth, the 'Revenge,' was unable
for the moment to follow. Of her crew of 190, ninety were sick on shore,
and, from the position of the ship, there was some delay and difficulty
in getting them on board. The 'Revenge' was commanded by Sir Richard
Grenville, of Bideford, a man well known in the Spanish seas, and the
terror of the Spanish sailors; so fierce he was said to be, that mythic
stories passed from lip to lip about him, and, like Earl Talbot or
Coeur de Lion, the nurses at the Azores frightened children with the
sound of his name. 'He was of great revenues, of his own inheritance,'
they said, 'but of unquiet mind, and greatly affected to wars;' and from
his uncontrollable propensities for blood-eating, he had volunteered his
services to the queen; 'of so hard a complexion was he, that I (John
Huighen von Linschoten, who is our authority here, and who was with the
Spanish fleet after the action) have been told by divers credible
persons who stood and beheld him, that he would carouse three or four
glasses of wine, and take the glasses between his teeth and crush them
in pieces and swallow them down.' Such Grenville was to the Spaniard. To
the English he was a goodly and gallant gentleman, who had never turned
his back upon an enemy, and was remarkable in that remarkable time for
his constancy and daring. In this surprise at Florez he was in no haste
to fly. He first saw all his sick on board and stowed away on the
ballast; and then, with no more than 100 men left him to fight and work
the ship, he deliberately weighed, uncertain, as it seemed at first,
what he intended