“We’ll warm them up,” cries Guy, as the guns of the Dover Lass’s starboard battery open on the mass of [[178]]struggling, drowning men. So also the Dutch ships.
But Alva’s Spanish infantry on land or sea are not to be defeated in a moment. The officer in command deploys a number of his men as skirmishers, and they, with their arquebuses, open on the ships. Soon balls are whistling over the bulwarks and through the rigging of the Dover Lass in stinging volleys, as well as scattering shots.
Others of the Spaniards crawling upon the ice try to get at the cables holding the vessels to cut them from their moorings, so they will drift to one side or the other of the lake and become accessible to escalade and boarding. Then Guy, going forward to the forecastle to direct his men to use their arquebuses defending their cables from attack, finds it is well that he is in knightly armor. Were it not for his steel breastplate some Spanish sharpshooters had done for him. Two bullets flatten against his armor and one sweeps the plume from his helmet.
But the cables are kept taut, and those who venture against them in this desperate service are all shot down and the broadside of the Dover Lass still thunders, scourging the ice with bullets.
All does not go so well upon the other side of the floating fortress; by great exertions and much loss of men the Spaniards at last succeed in cutting one Gueux cable; unable to withstand the additional strain another anchor pulls out of the ice, and the wooden citadel drifts against the solid floe.
Now is the Spaniards chance; in a moment they have their boarding ladders planted against the ship whose deck the Dover Lass’s bow overlooks, for she is a smaller craft.
As the Spaniards swarm up the ladders to fight their way upon the Dutchman’s deck—Guy calls his boarders and they spring to the assistance of their assaulted comrades—the other Gueux vessels sending detachments also to the deck of this vessel, which now becomes the focus of the fight.
Once by very force of numbers the Spaniards gain the quarter-deck of the Dutch ship, and shouting with triumph, think the day is theirs; but the murdering-pieces on the vessel’s own forecastle and two from the [[179]]bow of the Dover Lass drown this cry with their reports as they cut lanes in the cheering mass. Then with a rush from the other vessels—the deck is regained, but only partially—as Alva’s veterans fight as if they were never to be beaten—their leader bearing a charmed life.
Twice he and Guy have crossed swords, but have been swept away from each other by the surging tide of battle—which is again turning to numbers, and the Spaniards. The cannon of the boarded ship are now of little use, and the guns of the other vessels will not bear upon this side of the fight—the day is looking badly for the Beggars of the Sea.
But as Guy fights he thinks, and suddenly returning to his own ship, cries out: “Load up two demi-culverins with solid shot and get them on our forecastle.”