"Didst ever hear of the Content?" sang out a gunner.
"Or of the Merchant Royal?" cried another.
"Or of the Revenge?" quoth Master Jeremy Sparrow. "Go hang
thyself, coward, or, if you choose, swim out to the Spaniard, and
shift from thy wet doublet and hose into a sanbenito. Let the don
come, shoot if he can, and land if he will! We'll singe his beard in
Virginia as we did at Cales!
'The great St. Philip, the pride of the Spaniards,
Was burnt to the bottom and sunk in the sea.
the St. Andrew and eke the St. Matthew
We took in fight manfully and brought away.'
And so we'll do with this one, my masters! We'll sink her, or we'll
take her and send her against her own galleons and galleasses!
'Dub-a-dub, dub-a-dub, thus strike their drums,
Tantara, tantara, the Englishman comes!' "
His great voice and great presence seized and held the attention of
all. Over his doublet of rusty black he had clapped a yet rustier
back and breast; on his bushy hair rode a headpiece many sizes too
small; by his side was an old broadsword, and over his shoulder a
pike. Suddenly, from gay hardihood his countenance changed to an
expression more befitting his calling. "Our cause is just, my
masters!" he cried. "We stand here not for England alone; we stand
for the love of law, for the love of liberty, for the fear of God, who
will not desert his servants and his cause, nor give over to
Anti-Christ this virgin world.
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