Hervé Riel by Robert Browning — Read

I

On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two, / Did the English fight the French, -- woe to France! / And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter through the blue, / Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue, / Came crowding ship on ship to Saint Malo on the Rance, / With the English fleet in view.