CHAPTER IX.
THE TAKING OF THE GALLEONS.
Looking back upon that great day--it was October 11--it seems to me that many of the events which happened must have been due to the mercy and goodness of God, so incredible were they.
For see now what fell out at the very first, namely, that the haze and mist were so thick that we were enabled to anchor at the mouth of the great river and harbour without so much as even our presence being known, so that when the sun set and the fog lifted, the surprise of those snared and trapped creatures was great, and they at once began firing wildly upon us, without, however, doing any harm whatever. But the lifting of that fog showed us what we had to encounter, the work that was to be done.
For, first, it enabled us to see that, across the river, or narrow strait, as indeed it was, the French admiral had laid a tremendous boom, made up of cables, yards and masts, topchains and casts, some nine feet in circumference, while the whole was kept fixed and steady by anchors at either side. This, too, we perceived, was constructed between two forts known as the Ronde and the Noot, one on the left bank and the other on the right, while far up the harbour, where we saw the galleons all a-lying tucked in comfortably under the cliffs, with a line of French ships of battle, and some Spanish ones, ahead of and guarding them, we perceived a great fort, which is known as the Fort of Redondella.
And now the night came down upon us, and we knew that for this day there would be no fighting, though, since all through it the admiral went from ship to ship in his barge, giving orders, 'twas very certain that at daybreak it would begin.
And so it did, as now I have to describe.
For on the morrow, and when, as near six o'clock as may be, the sun came up swiftly over the great hills, or mountains, which abound here, we made our first preparations for the attack by the landing of the Duke of Ormond with two thousand five hundred and fifty men on the side of the Fort Redondella, they marching at once toward it on foot.
As for myself, although a soldier, it had been decided that I should remain in the Pembroke, and this for more than one reason.
"You have," said Captain Hardy to me, "no uniform with you; therefore, if you fall into the hands of those on shore it may go hard with you. Yet here you can be of service; help train a gun, if need be, issue orders, take part in the boarding, which must surely occur, perhaps take part in sacking of the galleons. There's business for you--such, indeed as, as a soldier, you are not very like to ever see again. My lad!" he went on--and in truth I was a lad to him, though I esteemed myself a very full-fledged man--"you are to be congratulated. You will have much to talk about in years to come--if you survive this day--which falls not often to a landsman's lot," and he ran away as gay as a lad himself, all grizzled with service though he was, to prepare for assisting in breaking the boom.
So I stayed in the Pembroke and, as you shall see, if you do but read, the doing so led to all that happened to me which I have now to set down, and all of which--had it not so happened--would have prevented this narrative from ever being penned, since it is not to describe only the siege of Vigo and the taking of the Spanish galleons that I am a-writing of this story.
Therefore I proceed:
Down from the hills already the smoke was rolling fast, obscuring the beauteous morn by now; white smoke from the cannon in the fort--through which there leapt every moment great spits of flame from the big guns' mouths!--dun-coloured smoke from the grenades carried by Lord Shannon and Colonel Pierce's grenadiers; black, greasy smoke vomited forth from the fuzees. And it came down to the water and poured across it in clouds, enveloping the galleons in its wreaths and the great French ships of battle; clinging around our own topsails and masts, almost obscuring each of our vessels from the other.
Yet not so much, neither, but that--a breeze having sprung up after a calm which had enforced us to drop our anchors for a while--we, of the Pembroke, could see glide by us a great ship, with her men on yards and masts and in fighting tops, all cheering lustily, and some a-singing--a vessel that rushed forward as a tiger rushes to its prey. At first we thought it was the Royal Sovereign--that great, noble ship which transmits a name down from Bluff Harry's days--then knew we were mistaken. It was the Torbay, Vice-Admiral Hopson's own, in which he flew his flag, her sails all clapt on, her cable training at her side, where he had cut it, so as to lose no precious time, her course direct for the boom. And after her went ourselves, as hound let loose from leash follows hound. Captain Hardy had spoken true--'twas a day not to be missed!
We heard a snapping, a crashing--'twas awful, too, to hear!--we heard roar upon roar from hundreds of lusty throats in that great ship--we knew the boom was gone--cut through as a woodsman's axe cuts through a sapling. Amidst all the enemy's fire--fire from the French ships and those Spanish forts on shore--we heard it. And we, too, cheered and shouted--sent up our queen's name to the smoke-obscured heavens above. Some cried the old watchword of past days, "St. George and England"; some even danced and jumped upon the decks for glee--danced and jumped, even though the hail of ball was scattering us like ninepins, or a hundred pins!--even though some lay writhing on those decks, and some were lying there headless, armless, legless! What mattered? The enemy were there behind that boom, and it was broken. We were amongst them now. Let those die who must; those live who were to conquer.
Between the Bourbon and L'Espérance the noble Torbay rushed--to the jaws of death she went, as though to a summer cruise on friendly seas, her anchor cables roared through her hawse-holes--Hopson had anchored 'twixt those two great French ships! He was there; there was to be, could be, no retreat now; 'twas death or victory.
At first it seemed as though it could alone be the first. The cannon grinned like teeth through tier upon tier of gunboats in the Frenchman's sides; the balls crashed into the Torbay; they did the same with us and Vandergoes' ship, now ranged on the other side of the Bourbon--a French fireship had clapt alongside of her, and set her rigging alight; her foretopmast went by the board; her sails were all aflame; her foreyard burnt like a dry log; her larboard shrouds burnt at the dead-eyes.
Yet still she fought and fought--vomited forth her own flames and destruction; still from the throats of those left alive came shouts of savage exultation, for, all afire as she was, we saw that she was winning. And not only she, but all of us. We had sunk one Frenchman ourselves. Vandergoes had mastered the Bourbon--she was done for! The Association had silenced a battery ashore. And now a greater thing than all happened--Chateaurenault saw that he was beaten, set his flagship, Le Fort, on fire, and fled to the shore, calling on all his captains to follow him.
Yet still one awful dread remained! The Torbay was burning fiercely, charred masts and yards were falling to the deck--itself aflame--blocks burning like tarred wood crashed down, too. What if her powder magazine exploded! If it did, all in her neighbourhood would be destroyed, hurled to atoms, as she herself would be.
Almost it seemed as if that had happened now. There came a hideous roar, a belch of black, suffocating smoke; it set all sneezing and coughing as though a sulphur mine were afire. Yet that explosion, that great cloud of filthy blackness, those masses of burnt and charred wood hurled up into the air and falling with a crash on every deck around, amidst shrieks and howls and curses terrible to hear, though drowned somewhat by the booming of the cannon all about, was to be the salvation of the Torbay, of ourselves, and of the Dutchmen.
For it was the fireship itself that had exploded. It was, in truth, a merchantman laden with snuff, which had been hastily fitted up as one of those craft. And in so doing the density of the fumes which it emitted, and its falling débris when it was burst asunder, helped to put out the flames that raged in the Torbay and in us.
The firing began to cease even as this happened; the enemy began to recognise that 'twas useless. They would have been blind not to have so recognised. On shore 'twas easy Association; on the water the Bourbon was ours. The lilies were hauled down, in their place floated the banner of England; the fireship had vanished into the elements, the great boom lay in pieces on the water like some long, severed snake. Yet might one have wept to gaze upon the Torbay--the queen and victress of this fight--and upon ourselves.
There she lay--Hopson by now in the Monmouth, to which he had been forced to transfer his flag, so sad a ruin was she--listing over to her wounded starboard side, into which the water poured in volumes, it becoming tinged as it mixed with the blood in her scuppers; her yards and masts were charred sticks; black bits of sooty, greasy matter, which had once been her white sails, floated down slowly to the waves and fell upon and dissolved into them. Also her shrouds were but burnt pieces of rope and twine now. Upon her deck there were stretched a hundred and twenty men, dead or dying. And with the Pembroke it was almost as bad. We were shattered and bruised, our foremast gone, our own sails shot through and through, and hanging over the sides like winding sheets, our own decks charnel houses. Yet we had won the fight, the day was ours, the galleons our booty.
But were they? That was the question!
'Twas true, they were all as we had first seen them, though some, we noticed, had been run ashore, perhaps to give them a chance of hurriedly landing some of their cargo; but, alas! we noticed now that they were all aflame, were burning fiercely.
And we knew well enough what this meant--meant that the French and Spaniards had set them on fire so that we should benefit nothing through their falling into our hands. And all of us saw it at the same time--Rooke saw it, Hopson saw it--every man on board our English decks who was still alive saw and understood.
By God's mercy the breeze was still blowing into the strait. Some of us still had some sail left clinging to our bruised and battered yards; enough to take us farther in, enough to enable the boarding parties to row ashore, to reach those burning ships, to save something, surely!
From all the ships' sides as we ran up as far as we could toward where they lay, came now the hoarse grating of the ropes running through the blocks as the boats were lowered. Into those boats leaped swarms of men, their cutlasses ready, their pistols in their hands, their eyes inflamed with the lust of plunder, wild oaths and jokes, curses--and, sometimes, prayers that we were not too late--upon their lips.
And in our cutter I went, too--appointed to the command of her in place of the lieutenant who should have taken that command, but who now lay dead upon the Pembroke's deck, a dozen balls in his body.
Jostling one another--for there were scores of boats lowered by now, and all making their way, under either sail or the seamen's brawny arms, to where those burning galleons lay--we rushed through the half mile of water that separated us from them, all eager to board and be amongst the spoil. And woe, I thought, to him or them who, when we were there, should strive to bar our entrance! Our blood was up, fevered by the carnage of the earlier hours; woe to them who endeavoured to prevent our final triumph! Through wreckage of all kinds we went, spars, yards and masts, military tops floating like tubs, dead men face upward, living men clinging to oars and overturned boats and shrieking to be saved, while ever still, in front of us, the galleons burned and blazed--one blew up as we neared it, another, spouting flames from port and window and burning to the water's edge, sank swiftly and in a moment beneath the water.
But at last we were up to them, were beneath their bows, could see their great figureheads and read their names--most of them so terribly sacred that one wondered that even Spaniards should so dare to profane those holy words by using them for their ships!
And now some orders were issued by a grey-haired officer to those close by. The boarding parties were told off in boats of twos and threes to the different vessels flaming before our eyes. The one which I commanded was directed to a great vessel of three decks, having above her upper one a huge poop-royal, and named--heavens, what a name for a ship!--La Sacra Familia. And as we swept toward them all we saw that one mercy was now to be vouchsafed. There would be no further slaughter here; no need for more shedding of blood. The vessels were not defended; those who had set fire to them had undoubtedly fled.
Yet up on the poop-royal of that galleon, to which we now clambered by aid of rope and ladder--with cutlass in mouth and pistol in belt--as well as by chains and steps, we saw there was still some human life left. We saw a tall monk standing there, gazing down curiously at us, his shaven crown glistening in the autumn sun. Also, it seemed as though he smiled a welcome to us, was glad to see us; perhaps regarded us as men who might save him from that burning mass.
We rushed on board, and first, before all other things, except a salutation which I made to the monk by a touch of the finger to my hat, I directed those under my command to endeavour to stifle the fire, which seemed at present to be entirely confined to the after part of the ship. "For," said I to those of my own following, and also to those who had come in the other boats under the command of two bo'suns, "if this is not done there will be no getting at the goods whatever. Where generally is the storage made?" I asked, turning to one of these officers.
"Faith, sir, I know not," he said, with a harsh laugh. "My account has been ever with the king's--and now the queen's--ships. We sailors know little of such things as stored treasure. Yet," and he again laughed, "we have our opportunity now. If we can but quench this fire, we may learn something."
"Perhaps," said a voice behind me, musical and deep, and greatly to my astonishment--when I turned round and saw who its owner was, namely, the monk--speaking in very good English, "I may be of some service here. I have been a passenger in her since she loaded at Guayaquil," and his eyes met mine boldly.
They were large, roving eyes, too, jet-black and piercing, and looked out from a dark, handsome face. A face as close-shaven as the crown, yet with the blue tinge all over upper lip and chin and cheeks which showed where there grew a mass of hair beneath.
"I am obliged to you, sir," I answered, touching my hat again--for his manner proclaimed that this was no common peasant who had become a monk because the life was easier than that of a hedger and ditcher; but, instead, a man who knew something of the world and its courtesies. Then, he having told me that all the plate and coin was in the middle of the ship, and the merchandise, such as skins and leather, Campeachy wood, quinquina, silks, indigo and cochineal in the after part, I sent off all the men to endeavour at once to extinguish the flames below; to cut off communication between the atmosphere and that part of the ship which was already in flames; to close all hatches and bulkhead doors; to stop up the crevices by which the air could pass to the burning part, and, if possible, to separate the one half of the vessel from the other, as well as to pour down water on the flames.
And, half an hour later--while still I stood gazing down on the men at their work, and still by my side stood the monk, uttering no word, but regarding with interest all that was doing--one of the bo'suns called up to me, saying:
"We have scotched it now, sir. There is no more fire left."