148 BIDEFORD Then, as Tennyson tells the tale:—
"Sir Richard spoke and he laughed, and we roared a hurrah, and so
The little Revenge ran on sheer into the heart of the foe,
With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below,
For half of their fleet to the right, and half to the left were seen,
And the little Revenge ran on thro' the long sea-lane between."
The fight began at three o'clock in the afternoon and continued all that evening. The San Philip having received the lower tier of the Revenge, charged with cross-bar shot, was to some extent disabled, and shifted her quarters. Repeated attempts made to board the English vessel were repulsed. All that August night the fight continued, the stars shining overhead, but eclipsed by the clouds of smoke from the cannon. Ship after ship came in upon the Revenge, so that she was continuously engaged with two mighty galleons, one on each side, and with the enemy boarding her on both. Before morning fifteen men-of-war had been engaged with her, but all in vain; some had been sunk, the rest repulsed.
" And the rest, they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand,
For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqeteers,
And a dozen times we shook 'em off, as a dog that shakes his ears,
When he leaps from the water to land."
All the powder at length in the Revenge was spent, all her pikes were broken, forty out of her hundred men were killed, and a great number of the rest wounded.
