But his δαιμονίη ἀρετὴ (as Froude calls it) was soon to be exemplified in a still more striking manner in that last great service for his Queen and country, in which he so nobly sacrificed his life, and which has been told by Raleigh and Tennyson in “Letters of Gold.” To his great mortification, he had been prevented from sharing in the glories of the defeat of the Armada, having received the Queen’s special commands not to quit Cornwall during the peril; but in the summer of 1591 he was appointed Vice-Admiral, under Lord Thomas Howard, and despatched to the Azores to intercept an unusually rich treasure fleet, which was lying at Havannah ready for the homeward voyage. Grenville’s ship was the _Revenge_, a second-class galleon, carrying twenty-two heavy guns, twelve light ones, and twelve small pieces used for repelling boarders. She had carried Drake’s flag against the Armada three years before, and was considered one of the best types of a fighting ship. On the 31st of August, Lord Thomas Howard’s squadron, consisting of six men of war and nine or ten victuallers and pinnaces, was riding at anchor in the bay of Flores; many of the crews were ashore digging for ballast, filling water casks, and obtaining fresh provisions and fruit for the sick, who numbered nearly half the strength of the fleet, for fever and scurvy had made havoc among the ships’ companies. Suddenly an English pinnace, the _Moonshine_, swept round a headland into the bay with the alarming intelligence that an armada of twenty Spanish men-of-war and over thirty transports and smaller craft were close at hand, despatched by Philip II. to protect his treasure ships. Howard at once determined that he was in no condition to fight a force so superior, and accordingly made signal to weigh anchor instantly. All obeyed but the _Revenge_, Grenville being delayed, according to Raleigh, in getting his sick men brought on board from the shore; and when at last she got under way, she had lost the wind, and was unable to follow the other vessels as they ran past the Spanish fleet to windward. A second line of retreat was still open to him: by cutting his mainsail, he could run before the wind, pass the Spaniards to leeward, and rejoin the flag in the open sea. But to pass an enemy to leeward was a confession of inferiority to which Grenville would not stoop, and, though urged to this course by his officers and crew, he scornfully and passionately refused, and, sword in hand, drove his men to their posts, swearing that he would hew his way single-handed through the whole Spanish fleet, or perish in the attempt.