Dead men he could descry through the blinding veil, rolled in heaps, laid flat; dead men and dying: but no man upon his feet.
The last volley had swept the deck clear; one by one had dropped below to escape that fiery shower: and alone at the helm, grinding his teeth with rage, his mustachios 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 the Spaniard's mizzen rigging.
What was this? The distance between him and the enemy's side was widening.Was she sheering off? Yes--and rising too, growing bodily higher every moment, as if by magic.Amyas looked up in astonishment and saw what it was.The Spaniard was heeling fast over to leeward away from him.Her masts were all sloping forward, swifter and swifter--the end was come, then!
"Back! in God's name back, men! She is sinking by the head!" And with much ado some were dragged back, some leaped back--all but old Michael Heard.
With hair and beard floating in the wind, the bronzed naked figure, like some weird old Indian fakir, still climbed on steadfastly up the mizzen-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 knoweth me? 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 rolled up more and more, like a dying whale, exposing all her long black hulk almost down to the keel, and one of her lower-deck guns, as if in defiance, exploded upright into the air, hurling the ball to the very heavens.
In an instant it was answered from the Rose by a column of smoke, and the eighteen-pound ball crashed through the bottom of the defenceless Spaniard.
"Who fired? Shame to fire on a sinking ship!""Gunner Yeo, sir," shouted a voice up from the main-deck."He's like a madman down here.""Tell him if he fires again, I'll put him in irons, if he were my own brother.Cut away the grapples aloft, men.Don't you see how she drags us over? Cut away, or we shall sink with her."They cut away, and the Rose, released from the strain, shook her feathers on the wave-crest like a freed sea-gull, while all men held their breaths.
Suddenly the glorious creature righted herself, and rose again, as if in noble shame, for one last struggle with her doom.Her bows were deep in the 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 cries and 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 sword pointed 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!" and the 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 his hat, "for the love of God and these men, strike! and surrender a buena querra."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 poop remained, and there stood the stern and steadfast Don, cap-a-pie in his glistening black armor, immovable as a man of iron, while over him the flag, which claimed the empire of both worlds, flaunted its gold aloft and upwards in the glare of the tropic noon.
"He shall not carry that flag to the devil with him; I will have it yet, if I die for it!" said Will Cary, and rushed to the side to leap overboard, 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 and shrieked amid the foam, and rushed upward at the Spaniard.It was Michael Heard.The Don, who stood above him, plunged his sword into the old man's body: but the hatchet gleamed, nevertheless:
down went the blade through headpiece and through head; and as Heard sprang onward, bleeding, but alive, the steel-clad corpse rattled down the deck into the surge.Two more strokes, struck with the fury of a dying man, and the standard-staff was hewn through.Old Michael collected all his strength, hurled the flag far from the sinking ship, and then stood erect one moment and shouted, "God save Queen Bess!" and the English answered with a "Hurrah!" which rent the welkin.
Another moment and the gulf had swallowed his victim, and the poop, and him; and nothing remained of the Madre Dolorosa but a few floating spars and struggling wretches, while a great awe fell upon all men, and a solemn 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, leaped overboard, 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 good comrade--nigh as good a one as William Penberthy of Marazion, whom the Lord grant I meet in bliss! And now, then, my masters, shall we inshore again and burn La Guayra?""Art thou never glutted with Spanish blood, thou old wolf?" asked Will Cary.
"Never, sir," answered Yeo.