Then Drake held out his hand for us to shake, so we did, fumbling with surprise. “I like courage and enterprise in any man, and faithfulness in any friend,” he said soberly. I felt my heart swell with pride. “Can either of you use weapons?” he then asked.
“I can shoot with a bow, sir,” I said, which is true, since I’ve been taught archery to go hunting with the Queen—except I’ve never had the heart to shoot anything alive. But I’m quite good at targets.
“A knife,” said Masou, eyes narrowing. “I can throw a knife.”
“Hm,” said Drake with a smile, “so can I. We’ll have a contest one day.” He shaded his eyes and peered out over the water. Suddenly he grinned most ferociously. “Unless I’ve gone blind, I’d say that smaller ship is Captain Derby’s Silver Arrow,” he observed. “And he’s in trouble by the looks of it, for that larger one is the Spaniard that’s been taking of our ships.”
“But aren’t they both flying the English flag?” I asked, squinting in the same direction.
“Aye, well, just a little entertainment for us,” Drake said. “Me, I’d say that bigger ship’s rigging is from Vigo—Spain.”
He leaned over and shouted to Mr. Newman again. A flag travelled up the mainmast and flapped in the wind—I recognized the double eagle of the Habsburgs of Spain.
“Something to entertain them, too,” said Drake with a laugh. “Now, boys, my thinking is that they Spaniels are shaping to take Captain Derby’s ship, which would be a pity seeing it’s his only livelihood.”
“And what about Lady Sarah?” I asked anxiously.
“Derby was smitten with her, I know that, for he nearly challenged me to a duel for sending her that bracelet,” Drake explained. “And so I think he did, in sooth, take her by force.” His eyes then turned all soft. “I hope such a delicate lady stays out of harm’s way in the next hour,” he added.
He wasn’t looking at me, thank goodness, he was staring into space, mooning about Sarah Copper-locks Bartelmy again. Hell’s teeth! Even as his ship was preparing to go into battle! What is it men see in her?
I was more worried about being caught up in a battle—for myself and Lady Sarah! I could see the two ships in the distance drawing steadily closer. A mixture of fear and excitement made my stomach feel like a posset-cup. My mouth was all dry, too. Was there really going to be a sea battle? I couldn’t believe it. How had it happened?
“Now,” said Captain Drake, holding onto a line. “Two likely boys like you, I expect you’ll want to be right in the thick of the fighting. Alas, I must disappoint you, and there’ll be no gainsaying me. I can’t have you down on the deck, for you might get in the way of us boarding. But you can fight from up here, understand?”
Masou and I both nodded—me because my mouth was so dry, my lips were stuck together. Want to be in the thick of the fight? In on a battle? Me? What if I got hurt or killed? (I thought killed might be better—much less embarrassing.)
“Masou, you run down and fetch a bow and quivers for your mate, and some fire pots and slow match for yourself, then come straight back up again,” Drake ordered.
“Aye, sir,” croaked Masou, then he swung himself over the side to go down.
“You, lad,” said Drake, staring at me very hard. “What’s your name?”
“Gra—Gregory,” I stammered. I’d nearly told him my name was Grace!
“Hm. Well, Gregory, there’s more to you than meets the eye, something not quite right. I know I’ve seen you before, but I cannot place you.”
“Maybe you saw me attending my Lady Sarah,” I said, trying not to squeak with nerves.
“Perhaps,” the Captain acknowledged. “At any rate, I can’t put my finger on it. Are you dealing straight with me, lad?”
“I came to find Lady Sarah,” I said. “I never meant to stow—”
“No, I believe you on that matter,” Drake cut in. “It’s something else.”
I felt as if his eyes were drilling holes in me.
He stared for a little longer and then seemed to come to a decision. “Aye, well, I’ve not leisure for it now, but you’ll tell me after, if you’re spared.” He wasn’t asking a question, he was stating a fact.
I swallowed hard.
There was a sound of climbing, and Masou reappeared, with bags and a bow slung over his back, and some slow match wrapped around his wrist.
“Ah, Masou, well done. Listen to what I want you to do.” The Captain had his tinder box out of his belt pouch and was lighting a candle, and then, carefully, the slow match. “Here’s your slow match—keep it away from the fire pots. Light the fuses one at a time, then throw the fire pot nice and easy into the rigging of the Spaniel ship, understand?”
“Aye, sir,” Masou said.
The Captain then turned to me. “Now, Gregory, these are fire arrows. Light them from Masou’s slow match and aim ’em for the sails, understand? When we’re grappled for boarding, shoot the ordinary arrows at the Spaniels, but once I lead the men across the boarding plank, stop shooting, for you might shoot me!”
“Aye, sir,” I said.
Drake smiled, his eyes serious and yet somehow also full of excitement. He seemed to be looking forward to the fight.
He clapped both of us on the back, then swung himself over the edge of the top and slid, hand over hand, down a rope.
Masou and I stared at each other, and then Masou crowed with laughter and punched the air with his fist. “I always wanted to be in a battle!” he shouted. “I am a warrior—and the finest acrobat in Mr. Somers’s troop. Allah akhbar!”
I think boys—men—are all complete Bedlamites. They’re all mad. Adventures are one thing, but a battle! My heart was thudding away, my palms all sweaty. I needed to make water, but I couldn’t on the draughty top.
To have something to do, I got the bow Masou had brought up to me and strung it. It was quite small and not too stiff—I had bent stronger bows before. But I was scared of shooting a fire arrow. There were twelve of them, with pitch-soaked wadding wrapped round the head and a lump of clay behind the fletching to balance them. There were twenty-four of the ordinary arrows, too—along with a bracer and gloves, which I put on.
Then I noticed her, the mother cat, climbing determinedly up the rigging towards me, with a kitten in her mouth. I stared disbelievingly. What was she doing?
I realized she must have been ousted from her nice warm nest in the sail locker, and now she was looking for a safe place. I heard a squeak nearby and looked round—there were three little furry, big-eyed faces peering over the side of a coil of rope just next to the mast. I stared at the mother as she climbed higher and higher, clinging with her claws. As if I didn’t have enough to worry about already! Once she almost slipped, but a sailor who was lacing another bit to the bottom of a sail to make it bigger just caught her in his hand and placed her higher up. And on she climbed with her kitten.
A drum started beating down on the deck. Boom-boom-boom, boom-da-da boom-da-da boom! There was something wild and dangerous and threatening about the beat—it made my heart beat along with it. The sailors were singing something, growling deep and loud. It sounded very fierce.
The two other ships were quite close now, and they were joined together by a plank and grappling hooks. You could easily see that one of the ships was much bigger—it was flying a Habsburg double eagle now and it had three masts. The smaller ship only had two masts—and a big pile of wreckage lay on the deck where half of one had fallen down. There were white splintery scrapes where cannonballs had hit, and what looked like bloodstains on the deck. Some kind of swirling battle was raging on the smaller ship, the Silver Arrow, but a few of the fighters were scrambling back across ropes to the Spanish ship.
I looked up at the Judith’s mainmast. The Habsburg double eagle was coming down and the red-on-white Cross of St. George was just flying free.
The mother cat appeared over the edge of the fighting top and leaped into the coil of rope, where she settled down. All the kittens start
ed feeding and kneading her with their paws.
BOOM!
It was the loudest noise I’d ever heard, and I nearly fell off the fighting top with fright. One of the guns on the deck had fired. Drake was on the poop deck, bellowing more Sailorish orders. The yards moved, and sent our ship leaning in towards the other two. Another gun fired. The Judith sailed past the grappled ships, on the other side of the Spaniard. Oh, good, I thought, maybe no battle. But then the guns poking out of the side of the Judith started firing.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The whole ship quivered. Clouds of smoke made it look as if we were sitting on a little island above the clouds. There was screaming from the Spanish ship. One of its cannons fired back, and splinters showered from the place where the cannonball had struck the Judith.
Drake yelled up to us. Masou licked his lips, lit a fire pot from the slow match, and lobbed it carefully into the Spanish ship’s fighting top. Flames rose up, followed by hissing as someone doused it with water. I nocked an arrow and Masou blew on the glowing slow match and lit the pitch-soaked wadding. It felt very hot, even through the leather glove. I felt the heat on my face, and fired without really aiming, high in an arch, just to get rid of it. I don’t think I hit anything.
Masou was already throwing again. I glimpsed Tom firing arrows, too, so I lit another one of mine, aimed for a sail as a target—and hit it. I watched the fire catch and spread.
Every so often, Tom would stare wildly in our direction. I wondered why, until suddenly I smelled burning close by. I stared wildly around. The cat was cowering deep in the coil of rope, with her kittens beneath her—too late she must have realized what an unwise place she had chosen. When one kitten tried to struggle out to look, she whacked it with a paw and pushed it back. Her fur was all on end and she was hissing. She was so small and so brave, it made me feel better at once.
I smelled a horrible stink. Some of the tarry ropes in our rigging were burning—there was a fire arrow stuck there from the boys in the Spanish ship’s top. They jeered in Spanish—they hadn’t noticed that their own sail was burning.
“Masou!” I gasped, pointing at the flames in the rigging.
“Later,” said Masou, narrowing his eyes and lobbing another fire pot into the crow’s nest of the other ship.
I couldn’t believe he was ignoring the fact that we might get burned to death! But I lit another fire arrow, too—fired, and fired again, always aiming away from the people. I just didn’t want to kill anyone, not even a Spaniard. They hadn’t done me any harm, even if they were trying to now!
Masou had thrown all the fire pots and had started several fires in the Spanish ship’s rigging. Now he took one of the bags of sand hanging above the fighting top platform, and climbed out along the ropes to get at the fire in our own rigging, which was now spreading.
I watched in horror as he hung by his knees, slit the sandbag, and poured sand into the place where the flames were leaping, then banged the place with the empty bag, until the flames were all gone and only smoke was left. Arrows fired by the Spanish whizzed past him, and something banged and cracked splinters off the wood right next to me. It was a musket ball. Suddenly I realized properly that the Spaniards really were trying to kill us!
I grabbed my bow and fired back at them, so they had to stop shooting and duck down. I was furious. How dare they try to shoot Masou like that! As soon as I paused, more Spanish arrows came flying over, and I had to duck myself. Fortunately, the Spanish didn’t aim very well, and several of their arrows stuck in the wood—which was good, because I could pull them out and shoot them back.
Next there was a dreadful grinding crash, and the whole ship shook like a leaf. Masou cried out. I peered over again. The rope he’d been hanging from had suddenly given way—he’d caught another one and was hanging by his hands, dangling over the deck, fifty feet below!
I heard a slam—they’d dropped the boarding plank onto the Spaniard’s rail.
“Follow me!” roared Drake, and he ran across the plank with his sword in his right hand and his pistol in his left, followed by his drummer hammering the drum, and a horde of sailors, all waving short swords and axes. Some of them were swinging across from the rigging onto the boarding nets, and climbing up—while the Spanish sailors tried to stab them with spears. The two ships rocked and jolted and there was the most terrible clanging and screaming.
Nobody was going to help Masou except me. So I squinted at the rope he was dangling from, trying to work out which one it was, out of all the many ropes criss-crossing the sails. Masou wasn’t far from the top of the big sail below us. At last I identified it—and luckily, the other end was attached to the fighting top. I unwound it part way, passed it round the mast, and then, holding my breath, unwound the rest of it and let it out a little at a time. Masou was very heavy, despite being small. I couldn’t possibly pull him up, so I eased him down bit by bit, while trying to keep away from the flying arrows. “I’m letting you down to the yard!” I shouted.
Masou was staying absolutely still to make it easier for me, reaching with his toes for the yard. Once he touched it, I felt the weight lighten. I lowered him a little more, and then—I couldn’t believe my eyes!—he just let go of the rope he’d been clinging to, and ran along the yard to the ratlines! He ran. Along a pole fifty feet up! And then, when he got to the ratlines, he reached out and swung onto them, then climbed up them to the fighting top. “Phew!” he said, and mopped his brow theatrically.
That was when I burst into tears, because I’d been so scared for him. He gave me a hug.
When I’d recovered, we peered over the top again—I’d run out of arrows by then. I saw Tom staring anxiously over again, so I waved and shouted, “The cat’s all right! She’s here!” I pointed to where the mother cat was still protecting her kittens in her coil of rope—thank goodness no arrows or fire pots had fallen there. After a moment, Tom smiled.
“What was that about?” asked Masou, frowning in puzzlement. “Why are you waving at that fat pig?”
“Oh, he’s not so bad,” I said. “Somebody put him up to bullying us. He’s been looking after the kittens.”
Masou blinked and then shook his head, looking bewildered.
When we looked over at the battle again, the huge swirling mass of fighting men had changed. It had now split into three groups, because the men on the Silver Arrow were helping Drake’s men, and the Spanish were getting pushed back to the front part of their own ship. I saw something white flapping on the Spanish ship, and pointed it out to Masou.
The next moment, all the clanging and fighting and noise began to fade, then stopped. All I could hear was a lot of men panting and gasping for breath, and someone moaning in pain.
“Come on!” said Masou. “The Spanish have surrendered.”
We climbed down in a hurry, and found that the men on the Arrow were cutting the Spaniard grappling ropes and trying to heave up the spiked boarding plank. I could see a tall man on the poop deck, shouting orders as Drake did, though he was too far away for me to be sure it was Derby.
Suddenly Drake was shouting orders, too. He stood on the rail of the highest deck on the Spaniard ship and jumped straight across onto the Arrow. Some of his men followed him. Meanwhile, Mr. Newman was aiming a pistol at the Spanish Captain, who was laying down his weapons.
Desperate to know what was happening, Masou and I picked our way across the deck, passing a man lying dead, an axe in his head. It made me want to be sick, so I tried not to look.
Masou jumped onto the boarding plank. “Come on, Gregory!” he shouted at me, then he ran along it, just as Drake had.
I ran after him, telling myself it was just like the top of the Orchard wall at Whitehall—which is easy to walk along. The next thing I knew, we were crossing the Spanish deck and then climbing onto the Spaniard’s boarding plank, to cross over to the Arrow.
And then, at last, we were scrambling onto the Arrow’s aft-deck. We pushed to the front of the crowd of
sweaty sailors, and there was Captain Drake, pointing his pistol at Derby. There was blood on Drake’s doublet, and his knuckles were grazed.
“All I want is a look in your Great Cabin, Derby,” Drake was saying softly. “No more. We are old friends, and besides, you owe me that for taking the Spaniel for you.”
Derby scowled. “What are you looking for?” he demanded. “There’s no treasure in there. The booty’s in the Spanish ship—bolts and bolts of silk that he must have had off a merchant.”
“Ah, but I think there is a treasure in that cabin,” said Drake. “Will I have to kill you to find it then, Derby? And you know I will, for all that we were friends once.”
Derby scowled and then shrugged. “Good luck to you,” he muttered. “She locked herself in last night, while we were busy trying to outsail the Spaniard, and she won’t open up.”
I nearly cheered.
“She, eh?” said Drake quietly.
“And her bloody tiring woman, too. I have had enough of the pair of them,” Derby declared. He stepped up to the door of his cabin and banged on it. “Open up, you foolish woman, it’s over!”
“No!” shrieked Lady Sarah’s voice. “Take me back to the Queen—at once!” Only she said a lot more about Derby and his parents, which I am leaving out to save her reputation.
Drake smiled coldly. “So it’s true, then. I counted you a friend, Hugh, for all we’re so different. And you betrayed me! You stole a woman from the Queen’s Court and had not the stomach to admit it, so you tried to lay the blame on me. I could have gone to the Tower and not even known why, thanks to you, friend.”
Derby stared at the deck.
Drake moved close to the cabin door, keeping Derby covered with his pistol. “Lady Sarah,” he called, “it is Captain Francis Drake here, ma’am. Will you open to me? I’ve come for to take you back to Court.”
There was silence. Then the door was unlatched and unbolted, and Lady Sarah peered out, with Olwen beside her. They both looked very tired and dishevelled, and Lady Sarah’s bright hair was tumbling down her back.
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