d lifted his hat and bowed courteously, and answered.
"Impossible, Senor. No _guerra_ is good which stains my honor."

"God have mercy on you, then!"

"Amen!" said the Spaniard, crossing himself.

She gave one awful lunge 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 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 the 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. 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.

"To St. Jago be it," said Amyas, "if we can get