ed alongside to grapple and board
her, whilst Hagthorpe was doing the like by the San Felipe.

And in all this time not a single shot had the Spaniards contrived to
fire, so completely had they been taken by surprise, and so swift and
paralyzing had been Blood's stroke.

Boarded now and faced by the cold steel of the buccaneers, neither the
San Felipe nor the Infanta offered much resistance. The sight of their
admiral in flames, and the Salvador drifting crippled from the action,
had so utterly disheartened them that they accounted themselves
vanquished, and laid down their arms.

If by a resolute stand the Salvador had encouraged the other two
undamaged vessels to resistance, the Spaniards might well have
retrieved the fortunes of the day. But it happened that the Salvador was
handicapped in true Spanish fashion by being the treasure-ship of the
fleet, with plate on board to the value of some fifty thousand pieces.
Intent above all upon saving this from falling into the hands of the
pirates, Don Miguel, who, with a remnant of his crew, had meanwhile
transferred himself aboard her, headed her down towards Palomas and the
fort that guarded the passage. This fort the Admiral, in those days of
waiting, had taken the precaution secretly to garrison and rearm. For
the purpose he had stripped the fort of Cojero, farther out on the gulf,
of its entire armament, which included some cannon-royal of more than
ordinary range and power.

With no suspicion of this, Captain Blood gave chase, accompanied by
the Infanta, which was manned now by a prize-crew under the command of
Yberville. The stern chasers of the Salvador desultorily returned the
punishing fire of the pursuers; but such was the damage she, herself,
sustained, that presently, coming under the guns of the fort, she began
to sink, and finally settled down in the shallows with part of her hull
above water. Thence, some in boats and some by swimming, the Admiral got
his crew ashore on Palomas as best he could.

And then, just as Captain Blood accounted the victory won, and that his
way out of that trap to the open sea beyond lay clear, the fort suddenly
revealed its formidable and utterly unsuspected strength. With a roar
the cannons-royal proclaimed themselves, and the Arabella staggered
under a blow that smashed her bulwarks at the waist and scattered death
and confusion among the seamen gathered there.

Had not Pitt, her master, himself seized the whipstaff and put