At Last by Charles Kingsley
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page 7 of 501 (01%)
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board the Spanish Admiral's ship to die; and gave up his gallant
ghost with those once-famous words: 'Here die I, Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind; for that I have ended my life as a true soldier ought, fighting for his country, queen, religion, and honour; my soul willingly departing from this body, leaving behind the lasting fame of having behaved as every valiant soldier is in his duty bound to do.' Yes; we were on the track of the old sea-heroes; of Drake and Hawkins, Carlile and Cavendish, Cumberland and Raleigh, Preston and Sommers, Frobisher and Duddeley, Keymis and Whiddon, which last, in that same Flores fight, stood by Sir Richard Grenville all alone, and, in 'a small ship called the Pilgrim, hovered all night to see the successe: but in the morning, bearing with the Revenge, was hunted like a hare amongst many ravenous houndes, but escaped' {4}-- to learn, in after years, in company with hapless Keymis, only too much about that Trinidad and Gulf of Paria whither we were bound. Yes. There were heroes in England in those days. Are we, their descendants, degenerate from them? I, for one, believe not But they were taught--what we take pride in refusing to be taught--namely, to obey. The morning dawned: but Pico, some fifty miles away, was taking his morning bath among the clouds, and gave no glimpse of his eleven thousand feet crater cone, now capped, they said, with winter snow. Yet neither last night's outlook nor that morning's was without result. For as the steamer stopped last night to pack her engines, and slipped along under sail at some three knots an hour, we made out clearly that the larger diffused patches of phosphorescence were |
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