Here’s the English can and will!”

Then the pilots of the place put out brisk and leaped on board.

“Why, what hope or chance have ships like these to pass?”

laughed they.

“Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage scarred

and scored,

Shall the Formidable here, with her twelve and eighty guns,

Think to make the river-mouth by the single narrow way,

Trust to enter where ’tis ticklish for a craft of twenty tons,

[Pg 38]

And with flow at full beside?

Now ’tis slackest ebb of tide.

Reach the mooring? Rather say,

While rock stands or water runs,

Not a ship will leave the bay!”

Then was called a council straight;

Brief and bitter the debate:

“Here’s the English at our heels; would you have them take in tow

All that’s left us of the fleet, linked together stern and bow,

For a prize to Plymouth Sound?

 Prev. P 20/118 next