What end could there be, but one, to courage so chivalric, so desperate, and so devoted as this? 'After the _Revenge_ was entangled with this _Philip_,' says Raleigh, 'four other boarded her--(_i.e._, laid her aboard)--two on her larboard, and two on her starboard. The fight thus beginning at three o'clock in the afternoon, continued very terrible all that evening. But the great _San Philip_ having received the lower tier of the _Revenge_, discharged with cross-bar shot, shifted herself with all diligence from her sides, utterly misliking her first entertainment. Some say that the ship foundered, but we cannot report for truth, unless we are assured. The Spanish ships were filled with companies of soldiers, in some two hundred, beside the mariners; in some five, in others eight, hundred. In ours there were none at all besides the mariners, but the servants of the commanders, and some few voluntary gentlemen only. After many interchanged vollies of great ordnance and small shot, the Spaniards deliberated to enter the _Revenge_, and made divers attempts, hoping to force her, by the multitudes of their armed soldiers and musketeers, but were still repulsed again and again, and at all times beaten back into their own ships, or into the seas.' 'And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand, For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqueteers, And a dozen times we shook 'em off, as a dog that shakes his ears When he leaps from the water to the land.' 'In the beginning of the fight,' Sir Walter Raleigh continues, 'the _George Noble_, of London, having received some shot through her, by the armadas, fell under the lee of the _Revenge_, and asked Sir Richard what he would command him, being but one of the victuallers, and of small force; Sir Richard bade him save himself, and leave him to his fortune. After the fight had thus, without intermission, continued while the day lasted, and some hours of the night, many of our men were slain and hurt, and one of the great gallions of the armada, and the admiral of the hulks both sunk, and in many other of the Spanish ships great slaughter was made.' The marvel is how a fragment of the brave little craft was still afloat, for 'Ship after ship the whole night long, their high-built galleons came, Ship after ship, the whole night long, with their battle-thunder and flame, Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her shame. For some were sunk, and some were shattered, and some could fight us no more-- God of battles! was ever a battle like this in the world before?'