‘Who was that?’ said Grenville’s deep voice.
‘’Twas little Johnny Nobody,’ murmured the culprit.
‘O! it’s you, Master Russe,’ said the General. ‘Still looking for trouble?’
‘No, he has just found it, Sir Richard,’ said Brion. ‘A mosquito hath bit his nose.’
Grenville gave a gruff laugh:—
‘All that? By the token, a prick from a Spanish-pike should bring a cry from him to split our mainsail.’
But he liked the boy well enough, and could appreciate at its worth the spirit which chafed under such tame inaction.
Still the fine weather held, while they ran up the Leeward Islands under a halcyon sky, making for St John’s, in the Virgin group, where was reported to be a Spanish settlement. On the 10th May they dropped anchor under the green shores of a little island called Cotesa, a day’s run from St John’s, and there landed, rejoiced to stretch their cramped limbs, and spent the day in rest and pleasant feasting; whence, resuming their course on the 12th they reached St John’s itself, and coming to anchor in a small bay of the island, called the Bay of Mosquitos, at a falcon’s shot from the beach, prepared for the first time for a show of business. Here the best part of the company, going ashore, engaged to throw up a temporary fort, in view of any possible mischief which might be designed them, seeing the nature of their mission, and how the Spaniards, deeming themselves owners of the New World, might desire to nip in the bud any such invasion of their self-elected privileges. And here Brion got his first true estimate of the forceful and tyrannical character of their commander; for Sir Richard, the moment hard action was called for, neither spared nor considered his men at anything less than the utmost which by oaths and violence he could wring out of them. Despatch was necessary, and despatch he would have, even to the exhaustion in such tropic heat of many of the crew. But the result was he got his fort built timely—though much of the wood for it had to be felled and fetched on trucks from a point three miles and more inland—and all the while till it was finished not a Spaniard showed his face. It was set against the estuary of a shallow river which here ran into the sea, and, having its back to the ocean, was encompassed on its two remaining sides with thick woodland. And now, his fort once completed, Sir Richard began to put into effect a design of his, which was to fashion within its shelter yet a third pinnace out of the timber brought down; which was done in something over ten days, and fitted and launched.
During all this time, until the 24th of the month, on which day the company departed from the island, only desultory acquaintance with the Spanish settlers was made. On the 16th there appeared for the first time a party of eight of them, horsemen, who rode out of the woods, and halted at a quarter mile distance to survey the fort; but on ten shot of the Admiral’s force being detached to approach them, they wheeled and galloped away.
Six days later again a body numbering twenty mounted Spaniards appeared on the other side of the river; seeing whom Sir Richard despatched a score of footmen to oppose them, together with two mounted on a couple of horses which had been found and seized on the island. And these two were no other than our young gallants, to whom had been deputed the glad task of leadership in a possible fray.