ling, twenty feet
above Amyas's head, and shouts through his vizor,--

"At your service, sir whosoever you may be."

A dozen muskets and arrows are levelled at him; but Amyas frowns them
down. "No man strikes him but I. Spare him, if you kill every other soul
on board. Don Guzman! I am Captain Sir Amyas Leigh; I proclaim you a
traitor and a ravisher, and challenge you once more to single combat,
when and where you will."

"You are welcome to come on board me, sir," answers the Spaniard, in a
clear, quiet tone; "bringing with you this answer, that you lie in your
throat;" and lingering a moment out of bravado, to arrange his scarf, he
steps slowly down again behind the bulwarks.

"Coward!" shouts Amyas at the top of his voice.

The Spaniard re-appears instantly. "Why that name, senor, of all
others?" asks he in a cool, stern voice.

"Because we call men cowards in England, who leave their wives to be
burnt alive by priests."

The moment the words had passed Amyas's lips, he felt that they were
cruel and unjust. But it was too late to recall them. The Spaniard
started, clutched his sword-hilt, and then hissed back through his
closed vizor,--

"For that word, sirrah, you hang at my yardarm, if Saint Mary gives me
grace."

"See that your halter be a silken one, then," laughed Amyas, "for I
am just dubbed knight." And he stepped down as a storm of bullets rang
through the rigging round his head; the Spaniards are not as punctilious
as he.

"Fire!" His ordnance crash through the stern-works of the Spaniard; and
then he sails onward, while her balls go humming harmlessly through his
rigging.

Half-an-hour has passed of wild noise and fury; three times has the
Vengeance, as a dolphin might, sailed clean round and round the Sta.
Catharina, pouring in broadside after broadside, till the guns are
leaping to the deck-beams with their own heat, and the Spaniard's sides
are slit and spotted in a hundred places. And yet, so high has been his
fire in return, and so strong the deck defences of the Vengeance, that a
few spars broken, and two or three men wounded by musketry, are all her
loss. But still the Spaniard endures, magnificent as ever; it is the
battle of the thresher and the whale; the end is certain, but the work
is long.

"Can I help you, Captain Leigh?" asked Lord Henry Seymour, as he passes
within oar's length of him, to attack a ship ahead. "The San Matthew has
had his dinner, and is gone on to Medina to a