CHAPTER XX
SPANISH BLOODHOUNDS AND ENGLISH MASTIFFS
"Full seven long hours in all men's sight This fight endured sore, Until our men so feeble grew, That they could fight no more. And then upon dead horses Full savorly they fed, And drank the puddle water, They could no better get.
"When they had fed so freely They kneeled on the ground, And gave God thanks devoutly for The favor they had found; Then beating up their colors, The fight they did renew; And turning to the Spaniards, A thousand more they slew."
The Brave Lord Willoughby. 1586.
When the sun leaped up the next morning, and the tropic lightflashed suddenly into the tropic day, Amyas was pacing the deck, withdishevelled hair and torn clothes, his eyes red with rage and weeping,his heart full--how can I describe it? Picture it to yourselves, pictureit to yourselves, you who have ever lost a brother; and you who havenot, thank God that you know nothing of his agony. Full of impossibleprojects, he strode and staggered up and down, as the ship thrashedclose-hauled through the rolling seas. He would go back and burn thevilla. He would take Guayra, and have the life of every man in it inreturn for his brother's. "We can do it, lads!" he shouted. "If Draketook Nombre de Dios, we can take La Guayra." And every voice shouted,"Yes."
"We will have it, Amyas, and have Frank too, yet," cried Cary; but Amyasshook his head. He knew, and knew not why he knew, that all the ports inNew Spain would never restore to him that one beloved face.
"Yes, he shall be well avenged. And look there! There is the first cropof our vengeance. And he pointed toward the shore, where between themand the now distant peaks of the Silla, three sails appeared, not fivemiles to windward.
"There are the Spanish bloodhounds on our heels, the same ships which wesaw yesterday off Guayra. Back, lads, and welcome them, if they were adozen."
There was a murmur of applause from all around; and if any young heartsank for a moment at the prospect of fighting three ships at once, itwas awed into silence by the cheer which rose from all the older men,and by Salvation Yeo's stentorian voice.
"If there were a dozen, the Lord is with us, who has said, 'One of youshall chase a thousand.' Clear away, lads, and see the glory of the Lordthis day."
"Amen!" cried Cary; and the ship was kept still closer to the wind.
Amyas had revived at the sight of battle. He no longer felt his wounds,or his great sorrow; even Frank's last angel's look grew dimmer everymoment as he bustled about the deck; and ere a quarter of an hour hadpassed, his voice cried firmly and cheerfully as of old--
"Now, my masters, let us serve God, and then to breakfast, and afterthat clear for action."
Jack Brimblecombe read the daily prayers, and the prayers before afight at sea, and his honest voice trembled, as, in the Prayer forall Conditions of Men (in spite of Amyas's despair), he added, "andespecially for our dear brother Mr. Francis Leigh, perhaps captive amongthe idolaters;" and so they rose.
"Now, then," said Amyas, "to breakfast. A Frenchman fights best fasting,a Dutchman drunk, an Englishman full, and a Spaniard when the devil isin him, and that's always."
"And good beef and the good cause are a match for the devil," said Cary."Come down, captain; you must eat too."
Amyas shook his head, took the tiller from the steersman, and bade himgo below and fill himself. Will Cary went down, and returned in fiveminutes, with a plate of bread and beef, and a great jack of ale,coaxed them down Amyas's throat, as a nurse does with a child, and thenscuttled below again with tears hopping down his face.
Amyas stood still steering. His face was grown seven years older inthe last night. A terrible set calm was on him. Woe to the man who cameacross him that day!
"There are three of them, you see, my masters," said he, as the crewcame on deck again. "A big ship forward, and two galleys astern of her.The big ship may keep; she is a race ship, and if we can but recoverthe wind of her, we will see whether our height is not a match for herlength. We must give her the slip, and take the galleys first."
"I thank the Lord," said Yeo, "who has given so wise a heart to so younga general; a very David and Daniel, saving his presence, lads; and ifany dare not follow him, let him be as the men of Meroz and of Succoth.Amen! Silas Staveley, smite me that boy over the head, the young monkey;why is he not down at the powder-room door?"
And Yeo went about his gunnery, as one who knew how to do it, and hadthe most terrible mind to do it thoroughly, and the most terrible faiththat it was God's work.
So all fell to; and though there was comparatively little to be done,the ship having been kept as far as could be in fighting order allnight, yet there was "clearing of decks, lacing of nettings, making ofbulwarks, fitting of waist-cloths, arming of tops, tallowing of pikes,slinging of yards, doubling of sheets and tacks," enough to satisfy eventhe pedantical soul of Richard Hawkins himself. Amyas took charge ofthe poop, Cary of the forecastle, and Yeo, as gunner, of the main-deck,while Drew, as master, settled himself in the waist; and all was ready,and more than ready, before the great ship was within two miles of them.
And now while the mastiffs of England and the bloodhounds of Spain arenearing and nearing over the rolling surges, thirsting for each other'sblood, let us spend a few minutes at least in looking at them both, andconsidering the causes which in those days enabled the English to faceand conquer armaments immensely superior in size and number of ships,and to boast that in the whole Spanish war but one queen's ship, theRevenge, and (if I recollect right) but one private man-of-war, SirRichard Hawkins's Dainty, had ever struck their colors to the enemy.
What was it which enabled Sir Richard Grenville's Revenge, in his lastfearful fight off the Azores, to endure, for twelve hours before shestruck, the attack of eight Spanish armadas, of which two (three timesher own burden) sank at her side; and after all her masts were gone, andshe had been boarded three times without success, to defy to the lastthe whole fleet of fifty-four sail, which lay around her, waiting forher to sink, "like dogs around the dying forest king"?
What enabled young Richard Hawkins's Dainty, though half her guns wereuseless through the carelessness or treachery of the gunner, to maintainfor three days a running fight with two Spaniards of equal size withher, double the weight of metal, and ten times the number of men?
What enabled Sir George Cary's illustrious ship, the Content, to fight,single-handed, from seven in the morning till eleven at night, withfour great armadas and two galleys, though her heaviest gun was butone nine-pounder, and for many hours she had but thirteen men fit forservice?
What enabled, in the very year of which I write, those two "valiantTurkey Merchantmen of London, the Merchant Royal and the Tobie,"with their three small consorts, to cripple, off Pantellaria in theMediterranean, the whole fleet of Spanish galleys sent to interceptthem, and return triumphant through the Straits of Gibraltar?
And lastly, what in the fight of 1588, whereof more hereafter, enabledthe English fleet to capture, destroy, and scatter that Great Armada,with the loss (but not the capture) of one pinnace, and one gentleman ofnote?
There were more causes than one: the first seems to have lain in thebuild of the English ships; the second in their superior gunnery andweight of metal; the third (without which the first would have beenuseless) in the hearts of the English men.
The English ship was much shorter than the Spanish; and this (withthe rig of those days) gave them an ease in manoeuvring, which utterlyconfounded their Spanish foes. "The English ships in the fight of 1588,"says Camden, "charged the enemy with marvellous agility, and havingdischarged their broadsides, flew forth presently into the deep, andlevelled their shot directly, without missing, at those great ships ofthe Spaniards, which were altogether heavy and unwieldy." Moreover, theSpanish fashion, in the West Indies at least, though not in the shipsof the Great Armada, was, for the sake of carrying merchandise, to buildtheir men-of-war flush-decked, or as it was called "race" (razes
), whichleft those on deck exposed and open; while the English fashion was toheighten the ship as much as possible at stem and stern, both bythe sweep of her lines, and also by stockades ("close fights andcage-works") on the poop and forecastle, thus giving to the mena shelter, which was further increased by strong bulkheads("cobridgeheads") across the main-deck below, dividing the ship thusinto a number of separate forts, fitted with swivels ("bases, fowlers,and murderers") and loopholed for musketry and arrows.
But the great source of superiority was, after all, in the menthemselves. The English sailor was then, as now, a quite amphibiousand all-cunning animal, capable of turning his hand to everything, fromneedlework and carpentry to gunnery or hand-to-hand blows; and hewas, moreover, one of a nation, every citizen of which was not merelypermitted to carry arms, but compelled by law to practise fromchildhood the use of the bow, and accustomed to consider sword-playand quarter-staff as a necessary part and parcel of education, and thepastime of every leisure hour. The "fiercest nation upon earth," asthey were then called, and the freest also, each man of them fought forhimself with the self-help and self-respect of a Yankee ranger, and oncebidden to do his work, was trusted to carry it out by his own wit asbest he could. In one word, he was a free man.
The English officers, too, as now, lived on terms of sympathy with theirmen unknown to the Spaniards, who raised between the commander and thecommanded absurd barriers of rank and blood, which forbade to his prideany labor but that of fighting. The English officers, on the other hand,brought up to the same athletic sports, the same martial exercises, astheir men, were not ashamed to care for them, to win their friendship,even on emergency to consult their judgment; and used their rank, not todiffer from their men, but to outvie them; not merely to command and beobeyed, but, like Homer's heroes, or the old Norse Vikings, to lead andbe followed. Drake touched the true mainspring of English success whenhe once (in his voyage round the world) indignantly rebuked some coxcombgentlemen-adventurers with--"I should like to see the gentleman thatwill refuse to set his hand to a rope. I must have the gentlemen to haleand draw with the mariners." But those were days in which her majesty'sservice was as little overridden by absurd rules of seniority, as bythat etiquette which is at once the counterfeit and the ruin of truediscipline. Under Elizabeth and her ministers, a brave and a shrewd manwas certain of promotion, let his rank or his age be what they might;the true honor of knighthood covered once and for all any lowliness ofbirth; and the merchant service (in which all the best sea-captains,even those of noble blood, were more or less engaged) was then anursery, not only for seamen, but for warriors, in days when Spanishand Portuguese traders (whenever they had a chance) got rid of Englishcompetition by salvos of cannon-shot.
Hence, as I have said, that strong fellow-feeling between officers andmen; and hence mutinies (as Sir Richard Hawkins tells us) were all butunknown in the English ships, while in the Spanish they broke out onevery slight occasion. For the Spaniards, by some suicidal pedantry, hadallowed their navy to be crippled by the same despotism, etiquette,and official routine, by which the whole nation was gradually frozen todeath in the course of the next century or two; forgetting that, fiftyyears before, Cortez, Pizarro, and the early Conquistadores of Americahad achieved their miraculous triumphs on the exactly opposite methodby that very fellow-feeling between commander and commanded by which theEnglish were now conquering them in their turn.
Their navy was organized on a plan complete enough; but on one whichwas, as the event proved, utterly fatal to their prowess and unanimity,and which made even their courage and honor useless against the assaultsof free men. "They do, in their armadas at sea, divide themselves intothree bodies; to wit, soldiers, mariners, and gunners. The soldiers andofficers watch and ward as if on shore; and this is the only duty theyundergo, except cleaning their arms, wherein they are not over curious.The gunners are exempted from all labor and care, except about theartillery; and these are either Almaines, Flemings, or strangers; forthe Spaniards are but indifferently practised in this art. The marinersare but as slaves to the rest, to moil and to toil day and night; andthose but few and bad, and not suffered to sleep or harbor under thedecks. For in fair or foul weather, in storms, sun, or rain, they mustpass void of covert or succor."
This is the account of one who was long prisoner on board their ships;let it explain itself, while I return to my tale. For the great ship isnow within two musket-shots of the Rose, with the golden flag of Spainfloating at her poop; and her trumpets are shouting defiance up thebreeze, from a dozen brazen throats, which two or three answer lustilyfrom the Rose, from whose poop flies the flag of England, and from herfore the arms of Leigh and Cary side by side, and over them the ship andbridge of the good town of Bideford. And then Amyas calls:
"Now, silence trumpets, waits, play up! 'Fortune my foe!' and God andthe Queen be with us!"
Whereon (laugh not, reader, for it was the fashion of those musicalas well as valiant days) up rose that noble old favorite of good QueenBess, from cornet and sackbut, fife and drum; while Parson Jack, who hadtaken his stand with the musicians on the poop, worked away lustily athis violin, and like Volker of the Nibelungen Lied.
"Well played, Jack; thy elbow flies like a lamb's tail," said Amyas,forcing a jest.
"It shall fly to a better fiddle-bow presently, sir, an I have theluck--"
"Steady, helm!" said Amyas. "What is he after now?"
The Spaniard, who had been coming upon them right down the wind under apress of sail, took in his light canvas.
"He don't know what to make of our waiting for him so bold," said thehelmsman.
"He does though, and means to fight us," cried another. "See, he ishauling up the foot of his mainsail, but he wants to keep the wind ofus."
"Let him try, then," quoth Amyas. "Keep her closer still. Let no onefire till we are about. Man the starboard guns; to starboard, and wait,all small arm men. Pass the order down to the gunner, and bid all firehigh, and take the rigging."
Bang went one of the Spaniard's bow guns, and the shot went wide.Then another and another, while the men fidgeted about, looking at thepriming of their muskets, and loosened their arrows in the sheaf.
"Lie down, men, and sing a psalm. When I want you, I'll call you. Closerstill, if you can, helmsman, and we will try a short ship against a longone. We can sail two points nearer the wind than he."
As Amyas had calculated, the Spaniard would gladly enough have stoodacross the Rose's bows, but knowing the English readiness, dare not forfear of being raked; so her only plan, if she did not intend to shootpast her foe down to leeward, was to put her head close to the wind, andwait for her on the same tack.
Amyas laughed to himself. "Hold on yet awhile. More ways of killing acat than choking her with cream. Drew, there, are your men ready?"
"Ay, ay, sir!" and on they went, closing fast with the Spaniard, tillwithin a pistol-shot.
"Ready about!" and about she went like an eel, and ran upon the oppositetack right under the Spaniard's stern. The Spaniard, astounded at thequickness of the manoeuvre, hesitated a moment, and then tried to getabout also, as his only chance; but it was too late, and while hislumbering length was still hanging in the wind's eye, Amyas's bowsprithad all but scraped his quarter, and the Rose passed slowly across hisstern at ten yards' distance.
"Now, then!" roared Amyas. "Fire, and with a will! Have at her,archers: have at her, muskets all!" and in an instant a storm of bar andchain-shot, round and canister, swept the proud Don from stem to stern,while through the white cloud of smoke the musket-balls, and the stilldeadlier cloth-yard arrows, whistled and rushed upon their venomouserrand. Down went the steersman, and every soul who manned thepoop. Down went the mizzen topmast, in went the stern-windows andquarter-galleries; and as the smoke cleared away, the gorgeous paintingof the Madre Dolorosa, with her heart full of seven swords, which, ina gilded frame, bedizened the Spanish stern, was shivered in splinters;while, most glorious of all, the golden flag of Spain, which the lastmoment f
launted above their heads, hung trailing in the water. The ship,her tiller shot away, and her helmsman killed, staggered helplessly amoment, and then fell up into the wind.
"Well done, men of Devon!" shouted Amyas, as cheers rent the welkin.
"She has struck," cried some, as the deafening hurrahs died away.
"Not a bit," said Amyas. "Hold on, helmsman, and leave her to patch hertackle while we settle the galleys."
On they shot merrily, and long ere the armada could get herself torights again, were two good miles to windward, with the galleys sweepingdown fast upon them.
And two venomous-looking craft they were, as they shot through theshort chopping sea upon some forty oars apiece, stretching their longsword-fish snouts over the water, as if snuffing for their prey. Behindthis long snout, a strong square forecastle was crammed with soldiers,and the muzzles of cannon grinned out through portholes, not only in thesides of the forecastle, but forward in the line of the galley's course,thus enabling her to keep up a continual fire on a ship right ahead.
The long low waist was packed full of the slaves, some five or six toeach oar, and down the centre, between the two banks, the English couldsee the slave-drivers walking up and down a long gangway, whip in hand.A raised quarter-deck at the stern held more soldiers, the sunlightflashing merrily upon their armor and their gun-barrels; as they neared,the English could hear plainly the cracks of the whips, and the yells asof wild beasts which answered them; the roll and rattle of the oars,and the loud "Ha!" of the slaves which accompanied every stroke, and theoaths and curses of the drivers; while a sickening musky smell, as ofa pack of kennelled hounds, came down the wind from off those dens ofmisery. No wonder if many a young heart shuddered as it faced, for thefirst time, the horrible reality of those floating hells, the crueltieswhereof had rung so often in English ears, from the stories of their owncountrymen, who had passed them, fought them, and now and then passedyears of misery on board of them. Who knew but what there might beEnglish among those sun-browned half-naked masses of panting wretches?
"Must we fire upon the slaves?" asked more than one, as the thoughtcrossed him.
Amyas sighed.
"Spare them all you can, in God's name; but if they try to run us down,rake them we must, and God forgive us."
The two galleys came on abreast of each other, some forty yards apart.To outmanoeuvre their oars as he had done the ship's sails, Amyas knewwas impossible. To run from them was to be caught between them and theship.
He made up his mind, as usual, to the desperate game.
"Lay her head up in the wind, helmsman, and we will wait for them."
They were now within musket-shot, and opened fire from their bow-guns;but, owing to the chopping sea, their aim was wild. Amyas, as usual,withheld his fire.
The men stood at quarters with compressed lips, not knowing what wasto come next. Amyas, towering motionless on the quarter-deck, gave hisorders calmly and decisively. The men saw that he trusted himself, andtrusted him accordingly.
The Spaniards, seeing him wait for them, gave a shout of joy--was theEnglishman mad? And the two galleys converged rapidly, intending tostrike him full, one on each bow.
They were within forty yards--another minute, and the shock would come.The Englishman's helm went up, his yards creaked round, and gatheringway, he plunged upon the larboard galley.
"A dozen gold nobles to him who brings down the steersman!" shoutedCary, who had his cue.
And a flight of arrows from the forecastle rattled upon the galley'squarter-deck.
Hit or not hit, the steersman lost his nerve, and shrank from the comingshock. The galley's helm went up to port, and her beak slid all butharmless along Amyas's bow; a long dull grind, and then loud crack oncrack, as the Rose sawed slowly through the bank of oars from stem tostern, hurling the wretched slaves in heaps upon each other; and ereher mate on the other side could swing round, to strike him in his newposition, Amyas's whole broadside, great and small, had been poured intoher at pistol-shot, answered by a yell which rent their ears and hearts.
"Spare the slaves! Fire at the soldiers!" cried Amyas; but the work wastoo hot for much discrimination; for the larboard galley, crippledbut not undaunted, swung round across his stern, and hooked herselfvenomously on to him.
It was a move more brave than wise; for it prevented the other galleyfrom returning to the attack without exposing herself a second time tothe English broadside; and a desperate attempt of the Spaniards to boardat once through the stern-ports and up the quarter was met with such ademurrer of shot and steel, that they found themselves in three minutesagain upon the galley's poop, accompanied, to their intense disgust, byAmyas Leigh and twenty English swords.
Five minutes' hard cutting, hand to hand, and the poop was clear. Thesoldiers in the forecastle had been able to give them no assistance,open as they lay to the arrows and musketry from the Rose's lofty stern.Amyas rushed along the central gangway, shouting in Spanish, "Freedomto the slaves! death to the masters!" clambered into the forecastle,followed close by his swarm of wasps, and set them so good an examplehow to use their stings, that in three minutes more there was not aSpaniard on board who was not dead or dying.
"Let the slaves free!" shouted he. "Throw us a hammer down, men. Hark!there's an English voice!"
There is indeed. From amid the wreck of broken oars and writhing limbs,a voice is shrieking in broadest Devon to the master, who is lookingover the side.
"Oh, Robert Drew! Robert Drew! Come down, and take me out of hell!"
"Who be you, in the name of the Lord!"
"Don't you mind William Prust, that Captain Hawkins left behind in theHonduras, years and years agone? There's nine of us aboard, if your shothasn't put 'em out of their misery. Come down, if you've a Christianheart, come down!"
Utterly forgetful of all discipline, Drew leaps down hammer in hand, andthe two old comrades rush into each other's arms.
Why make a long story of what took but five minutes to do? The nine men(luckily none of them wounded) are freed, and helped on board, to behugged and kissed by old comrades and young kinsmen; while the remainingslaves, furnished with a couple of hammers, are told to free themselvesand help the English. The wretches answer by a shout; and Amyas, oncemore safe on board again, dashes after the other galley, which hasbeen hovering out of reach of his guns: but there is no need to troublehimself about her; sickened with what she has got, she is strugglingright up wind, leaning over to one side, and seemingly ready to sink.
"Are there any English on board of her?" asks Amyas, loath to lose thechance of freeing a countryman.
"Never a one, sir, thank God."
So they set to work to repair damages; while the liberated slaves,having shifted some of the galley's oars, pull away after their comrade;and that with such a will, that in ten minutes they have caught her up,and careless of the Spaniard's fire, boarded her en masse, with yellsas of a thousand wolves. There will be fearful vengeance taken on thosetyrants, unless they play the man this day.
And in the meanwhile half the crew are clothing, feeding, questioning,caressing those nine poor fellows thus snatched from living death;and Yeo, hearing the news, has rushed up on deck to welcome his oldcomrades, and--
"Is Michael Heard, my cousin, here among you?"
Yes, Michael Heard is there, white-headed rather from misery than age;and the embracings and questionings begin afresh.
"Where is my wife, Salvation Yeo?"
"With the Lord."
"Amen!" says the old man, with a short shudder. "I thought so much; andmy two boys?"
"With the Lord."
The old man catches Yeo by the arm.
"How, then?" It is Yeo's turn to shudder now.
"Killed in Panama, fighting the Spaniards; sailing with Mr. Oxenham; and'twas I led 'em into it. May God and you forgive me!"
"They couldn't die better, cousin Yeo. Where's my girl Grace?"
"Died in childbed."
"Any childer?"
"No.
"
The old man covers his face with his hands for a while.
"Well, I've been alone with the Lord these fifteen years, so I must notwhine at being alone a while longer--'t won't be long."
"Put this coat on your back, uncle," says some one.
"No; no coats for me. Naked came I into the world, and naked I go out ofit this day, if I have a chance. You'm better to go to your work, lads,or the big one will have the wind of you yet."
"So she will," said Amyas, who has overheard; but so great is thecuriosity on all hands, that he has some trouble in getting the mento quarters again; indeed, they only go on condition of parting amongthemselves with them the new-comers, each to tell his sad and strangestory. How after Captain Hawkins, constrained by famine, had put themashore, they wandered in misery till the Spaniards took them; how,instead of hanging them (as they at first intended), the Dons fed andclothed them, and allotted them as servants to various gentlemen aboutMexico, where they throve, turned their hands (like true sailors) to allmanner of trades, and made much money, and some of them were married,even to women of wealth; so that all went well, until the fatal year1574, when, "much against the minds of many of the Spaniards themselves,that cruel and bloody Inquisition was established for the first time inthe Indies;" and how from that moment their lives were one longtragedy; how they were all imprisoned for a year and a half, not forproselytizing, but simply for not believing in transubstantiation;racked again and again, and at last adjudged to receive publicly, onGood Friday, 1575, some three hundred, some one hundred stripes, and toserve in the galleys for six or ten years each; while, as the crowningatrocity of the Moloch sacrifice, three of them were burnt alive in themarket-place of Mexico; a story no less hideous than true, the detailswhereof whoso list may read in Hakluyt's third volume, as told byPhilip Miles, one of that hapless crew; as well as the adventures of JobHortop, a messmate of his, who, after being sent to Spain, and seeingtwo more of his companions burnt alive at Seville, was sentenced torow in the galleys ten years, and after that to go to the "everlastingprison remediless;" from which doom, after twenty-three years ofslavery, he was delivered by the galleon Dudley, and came safely home toRedriff.
The fate of Hortop and his comrades was, of course, still unknown tothe rescued men; but the history even of their party was not likely toimprove the good feeling of the crew toward the Spanish ship which wastwo miles to leeward of them, and which must be fought with, or fledfrom, before a quarter of an hour was past. So, kneeling down upon thedeck, as many a brave crew in those days did in like case, they "gaveGod thanks devoutly for the favor they had found;" and then with oneaccord, at Jack's leading, sang one and all the Ninety-fourth Psalm:*
"Oh, Lord, thou dost revenge all wrong; Vengeance belongs to thee," etc.
* The crew of the Tobie, cast away on the Barbary coast a few years after, "began with heavy hearts to sing the twelfth Psalm, 'Help, Lord, for good and godly men,' etc. Howbeit, ere we had finished four verses, the waves of the sea had stopped the breaths of most."
And then again to quarters; for half the day's work, or more than half,still remained to be done; and hardly were the decks cleared afresh,and the damage repaired as best it could be, when she came ranging up toleeward, as closehauled as she could.
She was, as I said, a long flush-decked ship of full five hundred tons,more than double the size, in fact, of the Rose, though not so lofty inproportion; and many a bold heart beat loud, and no shame to them, asshe began firing away merrily, determined, as all well knew, to wipe outin English blood the disgrace of her late foil.
"Never mind, my merry masters," said Amyas, "she has quantity and wequality."
"That's true," said one, "for one honest man is worth two rogues."
"And one culverin three of their footy little ordnance," said another."So when you will, captain, and have at her."
"Let her come abreast of us, and don't burn powder. We have the wind,and can do what we like with her. Serve the men out a horn of ale allround, steward, and all take your time."
So they waited for five minutes more, and then set to work quietly,after the fashion of English mastiffs, though, like those mastiffs, theywaxed right mad before three rounds were fired, and the white splinters(sight beloved) began to crackle and fly.
Amyas, having, as he had said, the wind, and being able to go nearer itthan the Spaniard, kept his place at easy point-blank range for his twoeighteen-pounder culverins, which Yeo and his mate worked with terribleeffect.
"We are lacking her through and through every shot," said he. "Leave thesmall ordnance alone yet awhile, and we shall sink her without them."
"Whing, whing," went the Spaniard's shot, like so many humming-tops,through the rigging far above their heads; for the ill-constructedports of those days prevented the guns from hulling an enemy who was towindward, unless close alongside.
"Blow, jolly breeze," cried one, "and lay the Don over all thoucanst.--What the murrain is gone, aloft there?"
Alas! a crack, a flap, a rattle; and blank dismay! An unlucky shot hadcut the foremast (already wounded) in two, and all forward was a mass ofdangling wreck.
"Forward, and cut away the wreck!" said Amyas, unmoved. "Small arm men,be ready. He will be aboard of us in five minutes!"
It was too true. The Rose, unmanageable from the loss of her head-sail,lay at the mercy of the Spaniard; and the archers and musqueteers hadhardly time to range themselves to leeward, when the Madre Dolorosa'schains were grinding against the Rose's, and grapples tossed on boardfrom stem to stern.
"Don't cut them loose!" roared Amyas. "Let them stay and see the fun!Now, dogs of Devon, show your teeth, and hurrah for God and the queen!"
And then began a fight most fierce and fell: the Spaniards, according totheir fashion, attempting to board, the English, amid fierce shouts of"God and the queen!" "God and St. George for England!" sweeping themback by showers of arrows and musquet balls, thrusting them down withpikes, hurling grenades and stink-pots from the tops; while the swivelson both sides poured their grape, and bar, and chain, and the greatmain-deck guns, thundering muzzle to muzzle, made both ships quiver andrecoil, as they smashed the round shot through and through each other.
So they roared and flashed, fast clenched to each other in that devil'swedlock, under a cloud of smoke beneath the cloudless tropic sky; whileall around, the dolphins gambolled, and the flying-fish shot on fromswell to swell, and the rainbow-hued jellies opened and shut their cupsof living crystal to the sun, as merrily as if man had never fallen, andhell had never broken loose on earth.
So it raged for an hour or more, till all arms were weary, and alltongues clove to the mouth. And sick men, rotting with scurvy,scrambled up on deck, and fought with the strength of madness; and tinypowder-boys, handing up cartridges from the hold, laughed and cheeredas the shots ran past their ears; and old Salvation Yeo, a text upon hislips, and a fury in his heart as of Joshua or Elijah in old time, workedon, calm and grim, but with the energy of a boy at play. And now andthen an opening in the smoke showed the Spanish captain, in his suitof black steel armor, standing cool and proud, guiding and pointing,careless of the iron hail, but too lofty a gentleman to soil his glovewith aught but a knightly sword-hilt: while Amyas and Will, after thefashion of the English gentlemen, had stripped themselves nearly as bareas their own sailors, and were cheering, thrusting, hewing, and hauling,here, there, and everywhere, like any common mariner, and filling themwith a spirit of self-respect, fellow-feeling, and personal daring,which the discipline of the Spaniards, more perfect mechanically, butcold and tyrannous, and crushing spiritually, never could bestow. Theblack-plumed senor was obeyed; but the golden-locked Amyas was followed,and would have been followed through the jaws of hell.
The Spaniards, ere five minutes had passed, poured en masse into theRose's waist, but only to their destruction. Between the poop andforecastle (as was then the fashion) the upper-deck beams were left openand unplanked, with the exception of a narr
ow gangway on either side;and off that fatal ledge the boarders, thrust on by those behind, fellheadlong between the beams to the main-deck below, to be slaughteredhelpless in that pit of destruction, by the double fire from thebulkheads fore and aft; while the few who kept their footing onthe gangway, after vain attempts to force the stockades on poop andforecastle, leaped overboard again amid a shower of shot and arrows.The fire of the English was as steady as it was quick; and thoughthree-fourths of the crew had never smelt powder before, they provedwell the truth of the old chronicler's saying (since proved again moregloriously than ever, at Alma, Balaklava, and Inkerman), that "theEnglish never fight better than in their first battle."
Thrice the Spaniards clambered on board, and thrice surged back beforethat deadly hail. The decks on both sides were very shambles; and JackBrimblecombe, who had fought as long as his conscience would allow him,found, when he turned to a more clerical occupation, enough to do incarrying poor wretches to the surgeon, without giving that spiritualconsolation which he longed to give, and they to receive. At last therewas a lull in that wild storm. No shot was heard from the Spaniard'supper-deck.
Amyas leaped into the mizzen rigging, and looked through the smoke. Deadmen he could descry through the blinding veil, rolled in heaps, laidflat; dead men and dying: but no man upon his feet. The last volley hadswept the deck clear; one by one had dropped below to escape thatfiery shower: and alone at the helm, grinding his teeth with rage, hismustachios curling up to his very eyes, stood the Spanish captain.
Now was the moment for a counter-stroke. Amyas shouted for the boarders,and in two minutes more he was over the side, and clutching at theSpaniard's mizzen rigging.
What was this? The distance between him and the enemy's side waswidening. Was she sheering off? Yes--and rising too, growing bodilyhigher every moment, as if by magic. Amyas looked up in astonishment andsaw what it was. The Spaniard was heeling fast over to leeward away fromhim. Her masts were all sloping forward, swifter and swifter--the endwas come, then!
"Back! in God's name back, men! She is sinking by the head!" And withmuch ado some were dragged back, some leaped back--all but old MichaelHeard.
With hair and beard floating in the wind, the bronzed naked figure,like some weird old Indian fakir, still climbed on steadfastly up themizzen-chains of the Spaniard, hatchet in hand.
"Come back, Michael! Leap while you may!" shouted a dozen voices.Michael turned--
"And what should I come back for, then, to go home where no one knowethme? I'll die like an Englishman this day, or I'll know the rason why!"and turning, he sprang in over the bulwarks, as the huge ship rolledup more and more, like a dying whale, exposing all her long blackhulk almost down to the keel, and one of her lower-deck guns, as if indefiance, exploded upright into the air, hurling the ball to the veryheavens.
In an instant it was answered from the Rose by a column of smoke, andthe eighteen-pound ball crashed through the bottom of the defencelessSpaniard.
"Who fired? Shame to fire on a sinking ship!"
"Gunner Yeo, sir," shouted a voice up from the main-deck. "He's like amadman down here."
"Tell him if he fires again, I'll put him in irons, if he were my ownbrother. Cut away the grapples aloft, men. Don't you see how she dragsus over? Cut away, or we shall sink with her."
They cut away, and the Rose, released from the strain, shook herfeathers on the wave-crest like a freed sea-gull, while all men heldtheir breaths.
Suddenly the glorious creature righted herself, and rose again, as if innoble shame, for one last struggle with her doom. Her bows were deep inthe water, but her after-deck still dry. Righted: but only for a moment,long enough to let her crew come pouring wildly up on deck, with criesand prayers, and rush aft to the poop, where, under the flag of Spain,stood the tall captain, his left hand on the standard-staff, his swordpointed in his right.
"Back, men!" they heard him cry, "and die like valiant mariners."
Some of them ran to the bulwarks, and shouted "Mercy! We surrender!" andthe English broke into a cheer and called to them to run her alongside.
"Silence!" shouted Amyas. "I take no surrender from mutineers. Senor,"cried he to the captain, springing into the rigging and taking off hishat, "for the love of God and these men, strike! and surrender a buenaquerra."
The Spaniard lifted his hat and bowed courteously, and answered,"Impossible, senor. No querra is good which stains my honor."
"God have mercy on you, then!"
"Amen!" said the Spaniard, crossing himself.
She gave one awful lounge forward, and dived under the coming swell,hurling her crew into the eddies. Nothing but the point of her poopremained, and there stood the stern and steadfast Don, cap-a-pie in hisglistening black armor, immovable as a man of iron, while over him theflag, which claimed the empire of both worlds, flaunted its gold aloftand upwards in the glare of the tropic noon.
"He shall not carry that flag to the devil with him; I will have ityet, if I die for it!" said Will Cary, and rushed to the side to leapoverboard, but Amyas stopped him.
"Let him die as he has lived, with honor."
A wild figure sprang out of the mass of sailors who struggled andshrieked amid the foam, and rushed upward at the Spaniard. It wasMichael Heard. The Don, who stood above him, plunged his sword into theold man's body: but the hatchet gleamed, nevertheless: down went theblade through headpiece and through head; and as Heard sprang onward,bleeding, but alive, the steel-clad corpse rattled down the deck intothe surge. Two more strokes, struck with the fury of a dying man, andthe standard-staff was hewn through. Old Michael collected all hisstrength, hurled the flag far from the sinking ship, and then stooderect one moment and shouted, "God save Queen Bess!" and the Englishanswered with a "Hurrah!" which rent the welkin.
Another moment and the gulf had swallowed his victim, and the poop, andhim; and nothing remained of the Madre Dolorosa but a few floating sparsand struggling wretches, while a great awe fell upon all men, and asolemn silence, broken only by the cry
"Of some strong swimmer in his agony."
And then, suddenly collecting themselves, as men awakened from a dream,half-a-dozen desperate gallants, reckless of sharks and eddies, leapedoverboard, swam towards the flag, and towed it alongside in triumph.
"Ah!" said Salvation Yeo, as he helped the trophy up over the side; "ah!it was not for nothing that we found poor Michael! He was always a goodcomrade--nigh as good a one as William Penberthy of Marazion, whom theLord grant I meet in bliss! And now, then, my masters, shall we inshoreagain and burn La Guayra?"
"Art thou never glutted with Spanish blood, thou old wolf?" asked WillCary.
"Never, sir," answered Yeo.
"To St. Jago be it," said Amyas, "if we can get there; but--God helpus!"
And he looked round sadly enough; while no one needed that he shouldfinish his sentence, or explain his "but."
The foremast was gone, the main-yard sprung, the rigging hanging inelf-locks, the hull shot through and through in twenty places, the deckstrewn with the bodies of nine good men, beside sixteen wounded downbelow; while the pitiless sun, right above their heads, poured down aflood of fire upon a sea of glass.
And it would have been well if faintness and weariness had been all thatwas the matter; but now that the excitement was over, the collapse came;and the men sat down listlessly and sulkily by twos and threes upon thedeck, starting and wincing when they heard some poor fellow below cryout under the surgeon's knife; or murmuring to each other that all waslost. Drew tried in vain to rouse them, telling them that all dependedon rigging a jury-mast forward as soon as possible. They answered onlyby growls; and at last broke into open reproaches. Even Will Cary'svolatile nature, which had kept him up during the fight, gave way, whenYeo and the carpenter came aft, and told Amyas in a low voice--
"We are hit somewhere forward, below the water-line, sir. She leaks aterrible deal, and the Lord will not vouchsafe to us to lay our hands onthe place, for all our searching."
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br /> "What are we to do now, Amyas, in the devil's name?" asked Cary,peevishly.
"What are we to do, in God's name, rather," answered Amyas, in a lowvoice. "Will, Will, what did God make you a gentleman for, but to knowbetter than those poor fickle fellows forward, who blow hot and cold atevery change of weather!"
"I wish you'd come forward and speak to them, sir," said Yeo, who hadoverheard the last words, "or we shall get naught done."
Amyas went forward instantly.
"Now then, my brave lads, what's the matter here, that you are allsitting on your tails like monkeys?"
"Ugh!" grunts one. "Don't you think our day's work has been long enoughyet, captain?"
"You don't want us to go in to La Guayra again, sir? There are enough ofus thrown away already, I reckon, about that wench there."
"Best sit here, and sink quietly. There's no getting home again, that'splain."
"Why were we brought out here to be killed?"
"For shame, men!" cries Yeo; "you're no better than a set ofstiff-necked Hebrew Jews, murmuring against Moses the very minute afterthe Lord has delivered you from the Egyptians."
Now I do not wish to set Amyas up as a perfect man; for he had hisfaults, like every one else; nor as better, thank God, than many andmany a brave and virtuous captain in her majesty's service at this veryday: but certainly he behaved admirably under that trial. Drake hadtrained him, as he trained many another excellent officer, to be asstout in discipline, and as dogged of purpose, as he himself was: buthe had trained him also to feel with and for his men, to make allowancesfor them, and to keep his temper with them, as he did this day. True, hehad seen Drake in a rage; he had seen him hang one man for a mutiny(and that man his dearest friend), and threaten to hang thirty more;but Amyas remembered well that that explosion took place when having, asDrake said publicly himself, "taken in hand that I know not in the worldhow to go through with; it passeth my capacity; it hath even bereavedme of my wits to think of it," . . . and having "now set together bythe ears three mighty princes, her majesty and the kings of Spainand Portugal," he found his whole voyage ready to come to naught, "bymutinies and discords, controversy between the sailors and gentlemen,and stomaching between the gentlemen and sailors." "But, my masters"(quoth the self-trained hero, and Amyas never forgot his words), "I musthave it left; for I must have the gentlemen to haul and draw with themariner, and the mariner with the gentlemen. I would like to know himthat would refuse to set his hand to a rope!"
And now Amyas's conscience smote him (and his simple and pious soul tookthe loss of his brother as God's verdict on his conduct), because he hadset his own private affection, even his own private revenge, before thesafety of his ship's company, and the good of his country.
"Ah," said he to himself, as he listened to his men's reproaches, "ifI had been thinking, like a loyal soldier, of serving my queen, andcrippling the Spaniard, I should have taken that great bark three daysago, and in it the very man I sought!"
So "choking down his old man," as Yeo used to say, he made answercheerfully--
"Pooh! pooh! brave lads! For shame, for shame! You were lionshalf-an-hour ago; you are not surely turned sheep already! Why, butyesterday evening you were grumbling because I would not run in andfight those three ships under the batteries of La Guayra, and nowyou think it too much to have fought them fairly out at sea? What hashappened but the chances of war, which might have happened anywhere?Nothing venture, nothing win; and nobody goes bird-nesting without afall at times. If any one wants to be safe in this life, he'd best stayat home and keep his bed; though even there, who knows but the roofmight fall through on him?"
"Ah, it's all very well for you, captain," said some grumbling younker,with a vague notion that Amyas must be better off than he, because hewas a gentleman. Amyas's blood rose.
"Yes, sirrah! it is very well for me, as long as God is with me: but Heis with every man in this ship, I would have you to know, as much asHe is with me. Do you fancy that I have nothing to lose? I who haveadventured in this voyage all I am worth, and more; who, if I fail, mustreturn to beggary and scorn? And if I have ventured rashly, sinfully,if you will, the lives of any of you in my own private quarrel, am I notpunished? Have I not lost--?"
His voice trembled and stopped there, but he recovered himself in amoment.
"Pish! I can't stand here chattering. Carpenter! an axe! and help me tocast these spars loose. Get out of my way, there! lumbering the scuppersup like so many moulting fowls! Here, all old friends, lend a hand!Pelican's men, stand by your captain! Did we sail round the world fornothing?"
This last appeal struck home, and up leaped half-a-dozen of the oldPelicans, and set to work at his side manfully to rig the jury-mast.
"Come along!" cried Cary to the malcontents; "we're raw longshorefellows, but we won't be outdone by any old sea-dog of them all." Andsetting to work himself, he was soon followed by one and another, tillorder and work went on well enough.
"And where are we going, when the mast's up?" shouted some saucy handfrom behind.
"Where you daren't follow us alone by yourself, so you had better keepus company," replied Yeo.
"I'll tell you where we are going, lads," said Amyas, rising from hiswork. "Like it or leave it as you will, I have no secrets from my crew.We are going inshore there to find a harbor, and careen the ship."
There was a start and a murmur.
"Inshore? Into the Spaniards' mouths?"
"All in the Inquisition in a week's time."
"Better stay here, and be drowned."
"You're right in that last," shouts Cary. "That's the right death forblind puppies. Look you! I don't know in the least where we are, and Ihardly know stem from stern aboard ship; and the captain may be right orwrong--that's nothing to me; but this I know, that I am a soldier, andwill obey orders; and where he goes, I go; and whosoever hinders me mustwalk up my sword to do it."
Amyas pressed Cary's hand, and then--
"And here's my broadside next, men. I'll go nowhere, and do nothingwithout the advice of Salvation Yeo and Robert Drew; and if any man inthe ship knows better than these two, let him up, and we'll give him ahearing. Eh, Pelicans?"
There was a grunt of approbation from the Pelicans; and Amyas returnedto the charge.
"We have five shot between wind and water, and one somewhere below. Canwe face a gale of wind in that state, or can we not?"
Silence.
"Can we get home with a leak in our bottom?"
Silence.
"Then what can we do but run inshore, and take our chance? Speak! It'sa coward's trick to do nothing because what we must do is not pleasant.Will you be like children, that would sooner die than take nasty physic,or will you not?"
Silence still.
"Come along now! Here's the wind again round with the sun, and up to thenorth-west. In with her!"
Sulkily enough, but unable to deny the necessity, the men set to work,and the vessel's head was put toward the land; but when she began toslip through the water, the leak increased so fast, that they were kepthard at work at the pumps for the rest of the afternoon.
The current had by this time brought them abreast of the bay ofHiguerote; and, luckily for them, safe out of the short heavy swellwhich it causes round Cape Codera. Looking inland, they had now to thesouth-west that noble headland, backed by the Caracas Mountains, rangeon range, up to the Silla and the Neguater; while, right ahead of themto the south, the shore sank suddenly into a low line of mangrove-wood,backed by primaeval forest. As they ran inward, all eyes were strainedgreedily to find some opening in the mangrove belt; but none was tobe seen for some time. The lead was kept going; and every fresh heaveannounced shallower water.
"We shall have very shoal work off those mangroves, Yeo," said Amyas; "Idoubt whether we shall do aught now, unless we find a river's mouth."
"If the Lord thinks a river good for us, sir, He'll show us one." So onthey went, keeping a south-east course, and at last an opening in themangrove belt was
hailed with a cheer from the older hands, thoughthe majority shrugged their shoulders, as men going open-eyed todestruction.
Off the mouth they sent in Drew and Cary with a boat, and watchedanxiously for an hour. The boat returned with a good report of twofathoms of water over the bar, impenetrable forests for two miles up,the river sixty yards broad, and no sign of man. The river's banks weresoft and sloping mud, fit for careening.
"Safe quarters, sir," said Yeo, privately, "as far as Spaniards go. Ihope in God it may be as safe from calentures and fevers."
"Beggars must not be choosers," said Amyas. So in they went.
They towed the ship up about half-a-mile to a point where she could notbe seen from the seaward; and there moored her to the mangrove-stems.Amyas ordered a boat out, and went up the river himself to reconnoitre.He rowed some three miles, till the river narrowed suddenly, and was allbut covered in by the interlacing boughs of mighty trees. There was nosign that man had been there since the making of the world.
He dropped down the stream again, thoughtfully and sadly. How many yearsago was it that he passed this river's mouth? Three days. And yet howmuch had passed in them! Don Guzman found and lost--Rose found andlost--a great victory gained, and yet lost--perhaps his ship lost--aboveall, his brother lost.
Lost! O God, how should he find his brother?
Some strange bird out of the woods made mournful answer--"Never, never,never!"
How should he face his mother?
"Never, never, never!" wailed the bird again; and Amyas smiled bitterly,and said "Never!" likewise.
The night mist began to steam and wreathe upon the foul beer-coloredstream. The loathy floor of liquid mud lay bare beneath the mangroveforest. Upon the endless web of interarching roots great purple crabswere crawling up and down. They would have supped with pleasure uponAmyas's corpse; perhaps they might sup on him after all; for a heavysickening graveyard smell made his heart sink within him, and hisstomach heave; and his weary body, and more weary soul, gave themselvesup helplessly to the depressing influence of that doleful place.The black bank of dingy leathern leaves above his head, the endlesslabyrinth of stems and withes (for every bough had lowered its ownliving cord, to take fresh hold of the foul soil below); the web ofroots, which stretched away inland till it was lost in the shades ofevening--all seemed one horrid complicated trap for him and his; andeven where, here and there, he passed the mouth of a lagoon, there wasno opening, no relief--nothing but the dark ring of mangroves, and hereand there an isolated group of large and small, parents and children,breeding and spreading, as if in hideous haste to choke out air and sky.Wailing sadly, sad-colored mangrove-hens ran off across the mud into thedreary dark. The hoarse night-raven, hid among the roots, startled thevoyagers with a sudden shout, and then all was again silent as a grave.The loathly alligators, lounging in the slime, lifted their hornyeyelids lazily, and leered upon him as he passed with stupid savageness.Lines of tall herons stood dimly in the growing gloom, like whitefantastic ghosts, watching the passage of the doomed boat. All was foul,sullen, weird as witches' dream. If Amyas had seen a crew of skeletonsglide down the stream behind him, with Satan standing at the helm, hewould have scarcely been surprised. What fitter craft could haunt thatStygian flood?
That night every man of the boat's crew, save Amyas, was down withraging fever; before ten the next morning, five more men were taken, andothers sickening fast.
Westward Ho! Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the Reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty Queen Elizabeth Page 20