rs up the gangway with a fierce resolve to
call our late oppressors to a final account.

On the upper deck the fight was raging furiously. The Spaniards, furious
and desperate, were massed together in a solid body, keeping back the
Englishmen by sheer skill. Already between the gangways and the bulwarks
lay a great heap of dead and dying. High above the combatants on the
poop stood Nunez, his pale face set and drawn, watching the progress of
the fight with gleaming eyes and compressed lips. From the tops the
sharp-shooters were pouring showers of arrows into the English ship, but
the guns had ceased, and the gunners lay dead beside them.

We dashed on deck with a great cry, and for an instant the whole body of
combatants turned and looked at us. A strange and awful sight we must
needs have presented at that moment. There was scarcely a rag upon us,
our hair was long and unkempt, our shoulders were torn and bleeding from
the effects of the lashes lately laid on them, and our entire aspect
must have resembled that of wild beasts rather than of men. I saw Nunez
turn paler as he caught sight of us, and heard the English storm of
execration burst forth over the noise and confusion of the fight. Then
we fell upon the Spaniards from behind, and after that all was red, and
I seemed to do naught but strike and strike again, unconscious of pain
or wounds or anything but a fierce desire to be avenged on the villains
who had wrought such cruelty upon me.

Howbeit, after a time I felt myself dragged by a friendly hand out of
the thick of the fight and led across the bulwarks to the English ship,
where I was presently conducted on to the poop, into the presence of a
man whom I at once knew to be some great captain. He was of middle
height, with a high forehead, crisp brown hair, very steady gray eyes,
and a hard, fierce mouth, slightly covered by a beard and moustache. He
wore a loose, dark, seaman's shirt, belted at the waist, and about his
neck was a plaited cord, having attached to it a ring, with which his
fingers played as he spoke to me. On his head was a scarlet cap with a
gold band, even as the man in the galleon had said.

Such was my first glimpse of the great captain, Francis Drake, then
thirty years of age, and making his first voyage round the world. I
stood staring at him for a moment, and he at me, and I know not which
was most interested in the other.

"Who art thou, friend?" he inquired, presently.

"An English