"Bear up! Bear up! He still hath the weather gage of us."
Coupeau, working like a madman with his chase guns, was firing both together, laid on the same target, and now he succeeded in cutting down the foremast about twenty feet from the deck, sending the heavy spar and billowing canvas a-tumbling after the fallen topmast. The bulk of the wreckage fell overside, dragging the Santissima Trinidad down by the head and forming a sea-anchor to hold her stationary.
My great-uncle smiled with grim satisfaction.
"Ho, Saunders!" he hailed the second mate, who was stationed amidships. "Rig grappling-irons on the larboard bulwarks. We'll round the Spaniard as he lies."
The Royal James forged abeam of the treasure-ship, approaching at an angle which diminished the effectiveness of her second broadside, and as we entered the filmy cloud-bank of smoke from her guns Murray gave the order to fire.
"Let go your broadside, Coupeau!" he called.
The gunner ran to the open main-hatch and bellowed the order down to the gun-deck. The planks seemed to spring under our feet. A thunderous series of detonations shook the James' whole fabric. The smoke-clouds were first driven away, then thickened to an impalpable mist, and the acrid stench of saltpeter and brimstone was choking in the nostrils. I had a wavery glimpse of a vast gilded figurehead, a heap of torn canvas and rigging.
"Sta'b'd your helm, Master Martin!" shouted Murray.
We headed up into the wind with much creaking of yards and slatting of sails, and I heard faintly a clamor of wailing outcries from the smoke-bank that masked the Santissima Trinidad. Almost at once our broadside roared again, the red flames from the gun-muzzles licking out like hungry tongues. Another dim vision of shot-rent bulwarks and towering sails, and the gray gloom became denser than ever. Figures on our own deck were indistinct in it.
The Spaniard blindly returned our fire as the James felt her way toward him, the thunder of the two broadsides overpowering, numbing, like the roaring of two beasts fighting in the night. I felt my great-uncle's hand on my arm; his voice was low, but distinct.