Sliding down a liane, he told what he had seen.The men, tired of inactivity, received the news with a shout of joy, and set to work to make all ready for their guests.Four brass swivels, which they had brought up, were mounted, fixed in logs, so as to command the path; the musketeers and archers clustered round them with their tackle ready, and half-a-dozen good marksmen volunteered into the cotton-tree with their arquebuses, as a post whence "a man might have very pretty shooting." Prayers followed as a matter of course, and dinner as a matter of course also; but two weary hours passed before there was any sign of the Spaniards.
Presently a wreath of white smoke curled up from the swamp, and then the report of a caliver.Then, amid the growls of the English, the Spanish flag ran up above the trees, and floated--horrible to behold--at the mast-head of the Rose.They were signalling the ship for more hands; and, in effect, a third boat soon pushed off and vanished into the forest.
Another hour, during which the men had thoroughly lost their temper, but not their hearts, by waiting; and talked so loud, and strode up and down so wildly, that Amyas had to warn them that there was no need to betray themselves; that the Spaniards might not find them after all; that they might pass the stockade close without seeing it; that, unless they hit off the track at once, they would probably return to their ship for the present; and exacted a promise from them that they would be perfectly silent till he gave the word to fire.
Which wise commands had scarcely passed his lips, when, in the path below, glanced the headpiece of a Spanish soldier, and then another and another.
"Fools!" whispered Amyas to Cary; "they are coming up in single file, rushing on their own death.Lie close, men!"The path was so narrow that two could seldom come up abreast, and so steep that the enemy had much ado to struggle and stumble upwards.The men seemed half unwilling to proceed, and hung back more than once; but Amyas could hear an authoritative voice behind, and presently there emerged to the front, sword in hand, a figure at which Amyas and Cary both started.
"Is it he?"
"Surely I know those legs among a thousand, though they are in armor.""It is my turn for him, now, Cary, remember! Silence, silence, men!"The Spaniards seemed to feel that they were leading a forlorn hope.
Don Guzman (for there was little doubt that it was he) had much ado to get them on at all.
"The fellows have heard how gently we handled the Guayra squadron,"whispers Cary, "and have no wish to become fellow-martyrs with the captain of the Madre Dolorosa."At last the Spaniards get up the steep slope to within forty yards of the stockade, and pause, suspecting a trap, and puzzled by the complete silence.Amyas leaps on the top of it, a white flag in his hand; but his heart beats so fiercely at the sight of that hated figure, that he can hardly get out the words--"Don Guzman, the quarrel is between you and me, not between your men and mine.I would have sent in a challenge to you at La Guayra, but you were away; I challenge you now to single combat.""Lutheran dog, I have a halter for you, but no sword! As you served us at Smerwick, we will serve you now.Pirate and ravisher, you and yours shall share Oxenham's fate, as you have copied his crimes, and learn what it is to set foot unbidden on the dominions of the king of Spain.""The devil take you and the king of Spain together!" shouts Amyas, laughing loudly."This ground belongs to him no more than it does to me, but to the Queen Elizabeth, in whose name I have taken as lawful possession of it as you ever did of Caracas.Fire, men! and God defend the right!"Both parties obeyed the order; Amyas dropped down behind the stockade in time to let a caliver bullet whistle over his head; and the Spaniards recoiled as the narrow face of the stockade burst into one blaze of musketry and swivels, raking their long array from front to rear.
The front ranks fell over each other in heaps; the rear ones turned and ran; overtaken, nevertheless, by the English bullets and arrows, which tumbled them headlong down the steep path.
"Out, men, and charge them.See! the Don is running like the rest!" And scrambling over the abattis, Amyas and about thirty followed them fast; for he had hope of learning from some prisoner his brother's fate.
Amyas was unjust in his last words.Don Guzman, as if by miracle, had been only slightly wounded; and seeing his men run, had rushed back and tried to rally them, but was borne away by the fugitives.
However, the Spaniards were out of sight among the thick bushes before the English could overtake them; and Amyas, afraid lest they should rally and surround his small party, withdrew sorely against his will, and found in the pathway fourteen Spaniards, but all dead.For one of the wounded, with more courage than wisdom, had fired on the English as he lay; and Amyas's men, whose blood was maddened both by their desperate situation, and the frightful stories of the rescued galley-slaves, had killed them all before their captain could stop them.
"Are you mad?" cries Amyas, as he strikes up one fellow's sword.
"Will you kill an Indian?"
And he drags out of the bushes an Indian lad of sixteen, who, slightly wounded, is crawling away like a copper snake along the ground.
"The black vermin has sent an arrow through my leg; and poisoned too, most like.""God grant not: but an Indian is worth his weight in gold to us now," said Amyas, tucking his prize under his arm like a bundle.