This down-battering Captain Percy and his sailormen do their tarry best to bring about. But, as hour after hour drifts to leeward in the smoke of their broadsides, and the stubborn Lawrence continues to send his hail of twenty-four-pound shot aboard, it begins to creep upon Captain Percy, like mosses upon stone, that Fort Bowyer is a nut beyond the power of even his iron teeth to crack. As a red-hot shot sets fire to the Hermes and explodes her magazine, the impression deepens to apprehension, which, when the Sophia is reported sinking, ripens rapidly into conviction. Major Lawrence, with his “Don't give up the Fort!” all but blots Captain Percy—who has tenfold his force—off the face of the Gulf, and he does it with a loss of eight men killed and wounded to an English loss of over three hundred.
Captain Percy, whipped and broken-hearted, shifts his flag and what is left of his Hermes'' crew to the Sophia, and, pumps clanking hysterically to keep-himself afloat, goes limping back to Pensacola, lighted on his defeated way by the flare and glare from the blazing Hermes. As the English pass the extreme southern tip of Mobile Point, as far from the unmannerly batteries of Fort Bowyer as the lay of the land permits, they pick up the one-eyed proclamationist, Colonel Nichols, and his howitzerless men.
The fleet, battered, torn, sails adroop, with the Sophia three feet below her trim from shot-admitted water in her hold, reaches Pensacola. Governor Maurequez looks scornfully dark, but, Spaniard-like, shrugs his vainglorious shoulders and says to an aide:
“It is nothing! They are but English pigs! When this General Jackson reaches Pensacola—if he should be so great a fool as to come—we cavaliers of old Spain will tear him to pieces, as tigers rend their prey. Yes, amigo, we will show these beaten pigs of English how the proud blood of the Cid can fight.”
The Red Stick Creeks, furnished of a better intelligence, in no wise adopt the high-flying sentiments of Governor Maurequez. The moment the English come halting into the harbor, the awful name of “General Jackson!” leaps from aboriginal lip to lip. Hastily tearing off Captain Woodbine's red coats as garments full of probable trouble, but taking with them his new guns, the frightened Red Sticks head south for the Everglades, first drinking up what remains of their gin. Not a hostile Creek will thereafter be found within a day's ride of the General; all of those English plans, which seek the aid of savage axe and knife and torch, are to fall to pieces.
Captain Percy, made ten years older by that fight and failure at Fort Bowyer, goes about the repair of his ships; Colonel Nichols, omitting for the nonce all further proclamations, nurses his wounds; Captain Woodbine, having now no Indians, abandons his daily drills on the plaza; Governor Maurequez, whispering with his aide, brags in chosen Spanish of what he will do to thick-skull vagabond Americans should they put themselves in his devouring path; while over at Mobile the General hugs Major Lawrence to his bosom in a storm of approval, and gives that sterling soldier a sword of honor.
CHAPTER XI—THE TWO FLAGS AT PENSACOLA
THOSE two flags, one the red flag of England, flying at Pensacola, haunt the General night and day. His hunting-shirt men, twenty-eight hundred from his beloved Tennessee and twelve hundred from the territories of Mississippi and Alabama, are lusting for battle. He resolves to lead them into Florida, across the Spanish line.