ing, and personal daring, which the discipline of the
Spaniards, more perfect mechanically, but cold and tyrannous, and
crushing spiritually, never could bestow. The black-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 the
_Rose's_ waist: but only to their destruction. Between the poop and
forecastle (as was then the fashion) the upper-deck beams were left
open and unplanked, with the exception of a narrow gangway on either
side; and off that fatal ledge the boarders, thrust on by those behind,
fell headlong between the beams to the main-deck below, to be
slaughtered helpless in that pit of destruction, by the double fire
from the bulkheads fore and aft; while the few who kept their footing
on the gangway, after vain attempts to force the stockades on poop and
forecastle, leaped overboard again amid a shower of shot and arrows.
The fire of the English was as steady as it was quick.

Thrice the Spaniards clambered on board, and thrice surged back before
that deadly hail. The decks on both sides were very shambles; and Jack
Brimblecombe, who had fought as long as his conscience would allow him,
found, when he turned to a more clerical occupation, enough to do in
carrying poor wretches to the surgeon, without giving that spiritual
consolation which he longed to give, and they to receive. At last
there was a lull in that wild storm. No shot was heard from the
Spaniard's upper-deck.

Amyas leaped into the mizzen rigging and looked through the smoke.
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 forw