Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/605

 1 5 &x] THE DESMOND REBELLION. 585 chiefs, and would serve only with gold dollars in ad* vance, to desert with them at the first opportunity ; and the strangers, now all collected again, sat idly at Smerwick, intending if no further reinforcements were to be sent over, to re-embark and go home. But the chance was not allowed them. Orders were sent to Winter to return instantly to the coast of Kerry. The fleet left Portsmouth on the 13th of October. It was caught by a gale off Portland. The admiral, with most of the ships, ran in for shelter under the Bill. Captain Bhigham in the Swiftsure, having been parted from his consorts, and believing, as his ship was the slowest in the squadron, that Winter was before him, held on down Channel ; and after looking in vain into Falmouth made straight for Valencia. There he waited ten hours, and having learnt where the Italians were and the extent of their strength, he then sailed again for Smerwick, and brought up within falcon shot of the fortress exactly sixty hours after he had left St Helen's. 1 There entirely alone he lay for three weeks. Coming off in a hurry he had but half his complement of men. He had scarce hands enough to weigh his anchor. A fort with seven or eight hundred men in it, and the vessels in which these men had come were within a few cables' lengths of him. Fresh arrivals might any day appear from Spain, yet he preferred risking all chances to giving the Italians an opportunity of escape unfought with. Meanwhile Grey having recovered, as well as he Bingham to Walsingham, October 18 : MSS. Ireland.