One day the pasha found Smith threshing corn, in a barn some three miles distant from his castle. For some time he amused himself flogging this starved and naked wretch who had once been the champion of a Christian army; but Smith presently caught him a clip behind the ear with his threshing bat, beat his brains out, put on his clothes, mounted his Arab horse, and fled across the steppes into Christian Russia. Through Russia and Poland he made his way to the court of Prince Sigismund, who gave him a purse of fifteen thousand ducats. As a rich man he traveled in Germany, Spain and Morocco, and there made friends with Captain Merstham, whose ship lay at Saffee. He was dining on board one day when a gale drove the ship to sea, and there fell in with two Spanish battle-ships. From noon to dusk they fought, and in the morning Captain Merstham said, “The dons mean to chase us again to-day. They shall have some good sport for their pains.” “Oh, thou old fox!” cried Smith, slapping him on the shoulders. So after prayers and breakfast the battle began again, Smith in command of the guns, and Merstham pledging the Spaniards in a silver cup of wine, then giving a dram to the men. Once the enemy managed to board the little merchantman, but Merstham and Smith touched off a few bags of powder, blowing away the forecastle with thirty or forty Spaniards. That set the ship on fire, but the English put out the flames and still refused to parley. So afternoon wore into evening and evening into night, when the riddled battle-ships sheered off at last, their scuppers running with blood. When Captain Smith reached England he was twenty-five years old, of singular strength and beauty, a learned and most rarely accomplished soldier, a man of saintly life with a boy’s heart. I doubt if in the long annals of our people, there is one hero who left so sweet a memory.