Fifty-two Stories of the British Navy, from Damme to Trafalgar.Miles, Alfred H. (Alfred Henry)
History
Fifty-two Stories of the British Navy, from Damme to Trafalgar.
Miles, Alfred H. (Alfred Henry)
Great Britain -- History, Naval -- Juvenile literature
"Amongst the Turks was one thrust through, who (let us not say that it
was ill-fortune) fell off from the top of the prison wall, and made such
a groaning that the inhabitants thereabout (as here and there stood a
house or two) came and questioned him, so that they understood the case,
how that the prisoners were paying their ransoms; wherewith they raised
both Alexandria, which lay on the west side of the road, and a castle
which was at the city's end next to the road, and also another fortress
which lay on the north side of the road, so that now they had no way to
escape but one, which by man's reason (the two holds lying so upon the
mouth of the road) might seem impossible to be a way for them. So was
the Red Sea impossible for the Israelites to pass through, the hills and
rocks lay so on the one side, and their enemies compassed them on the
other. So was it impossible that the walls of Jericho should fall down,
being neither undermined nor yet rammed at with engines, nor yet any
man's wisdom, policy, or help, set or put thereunto. Such
impossibilities can our God make possible. He that held the lion's jaws
from rending Daniel asunder, yea, or yet from once touching him to his
hurt, cannot He hold the roaring cannons of this hellish force? He that
kept the fire's rage in the hot burning oven from the three children
that praised His name, cannot He keep the fire's flaming blasts from
among His elect?
"Now is the road fraught with lusty soldiers, labourers, and mariners,
who are fain to stand to their tackling, in setting to every man his
hand, some to the carrying in of victuals, some munitions, some oars,
and some one thing some another, but most are keeping their enemy from
the wall of the road. But to be short, there was no time mis-spent, no
man idle, nor any man's labour ill-bestowed or in vain. So that in short
time this galley was ready trimmed up. Whereinto every man leaped in all
haste, hoisting up the sails lustily, yielding themselves to His mercy
and grace, in Whose hands is both wind and weather.
"Now is this galley afloat, and out of the shelter of the road; now have
the two castles full power upon the galley; now is there no remedy but
to sink. How can it be avoided? The cannons let fly from both sides, and
the galley is even in the middest and between them both. What man can
devise to save it? There is no man but would think it must needs be
sunk.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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