Brion frowned. Those words touched a certain disquiet which had already more than once come to darken his own mind.
‘Well,’ he said, a little fretfully, ‘not the Fates can make us walk in our own footsteps backwards. If we have done wrong, we are speeding to retrieve it.’
‘Nay’—the eyes softened lovingly—‘I meant no blame to thee, sweetling. Yet that is a strange thought of thine. Is Death indeed returning to that home of Time from which we started; and Hell, perhaps, retracing all our sins in loathing of them?’
The look-out in the foretop shouted suddenly a sail. The two started and turned to the loud cry: and there, forged unexpectedly out of the mists on their larboard bow, rode a huge carack. She was so close, within a mile or two, that it seemed she must have blundered half-asleep into their ken; or perhaps, like some majestic leviathan, had disdained to alter her course for such insignificant fry. She swam as if deep-laden, flying the Spanish colours, and her burden was 300 tons, if an ounce.
In a moment the Tiger’s deck was swarming, and the Admiral’s orders issued sharp and violent. He grunted with satisfaction, rubbing his hands. Here was amends for much inglorious trafficing for one who, according to a contemporary chronicler, was ‘very unquiet in his mind, and greatly affected to war,’ and who would always rather, in a question of acquisition, plunder than barter. Nor were those he commanded less excited over the prospect than himself. At a breath all peevish humours were forgotten, all mortuary moods and talk of death and failure. The light of battle sprang to Clerivault’s eyes; with a silent clap of his hand on Brion’s shoulder, he hurried below to equip himself for the coming fray. Russe passed him, hastening to his friend’s side. ‘Good sooth, a monster!’ he said: ‘and with a double row of teeth, like a shark. There will be some credit in capturing her.’ He never doubted the issue. It was the spirit destined to wrest from the Spaniard his long undisputed sovereignty of the seas.
They luffed and made for the stranger, overhauling her hand over hand. In the light wind blowing they sailed two knots for her one. Every soul on board stood at the prick of expectancy; each gunner waited at his piece, linstock in hand. At long range they bore up and held away, running parallel with, but a little abaft, the carack, which kept her course, as if in stately indifference. At that distance she towered above them, a very behemoth of the deep. Suddenly there was a double flash from her sides, a slam, and a rending crash. A spout of splinters went up from the Tiger, almost under Brion’s feet, it seemed. A human scream or two, mingling horribly with the uproar, for an instant rocked his heart; and then fury and fire, as if over some damnable wickedness, blazed in his blood. He saw red, and screeched with frenzied triumph as the Tiger, shooting abeam of the other, ran up her blazing ensign, and simultaneously delivered her whole larboard broadside into the quivering hull of the monster; then yawed, and, letting the enemy forge ahead, passed under her stern, and gave her the other broadside full through her cabin windows, raking her fore and aft, and making her stagger as if she had struck on a rock.
And now was witnessed an example of the tactics which afterwards came to be used to such profit in the English game of sea-war; the nimble-heeled Tiger manœuvring so deftly about her unwieldy adversary as to allow her no breathing time for reflection, or power to shift her range, so that most of her shots, sped wildly, flew over her indefatigable tormentor, or, at best, smacked through her rigging, while every broadside driven home into herself tore her vitals to pieces. It was the game of the whale and sword-fish—seamanship versus mere weight of wood and metal, and had the inevitable ending. In the thick of the fury, when coming about for another swoop and stab, a roaring cheer went up from the Tiger; and there was the Spaniard’s ensign fluttering down, and the mighty prize was won.
As the noise subsided, the Admiral bade Master Thomas Candish, who was his shipmaster, to put his helm up and slip under the quarter of the carack; and thereat a lamentable discovery was made. For it appeared that the very last shot which the enemy had fired had carried away the best part of the Tiger’s rudder, so that she would not answer to her helm, and was become virtually unmanageable. Slowly, as the reek and fume of the guns dissipated, the ships fell apart—and the Tiger had not a boat left to her name. The Admiral stamped and swore like a maniac. By God, he would not lose her, though every member of the crew had to swim to take possession. He cursed in a very frenzy, striding up and down the deck, like some maddened marooned thing, watching the distance widen—when someone had an inspiration. Why not an extempore raft? He jumped at the suggestion, roaring at the man who had spoken to start and give effect to his idea, instead of gaping there like a bran-stuffed quocker-wodger. In a moment planks and empty chests were being hurried up, and lowered into the water, and bound into some hasty semblance of a raft. It was a crazy insecure contrivance, but enough for the temper of the moment. Before it was well finished Sir Richard was on board, and Brion and Tony had tumbled down beside him. A score of others followed, and the frail craft put off, urged on its way by hurriedly improvised sweeps. The waves jeered at and buffeted it, it laboured and wallowed; but still it made way. If the Spaniards had had any evil left in them, they might have sunk it with a single shot. But they had lost, it seemed, all stomach for the fight. The ridiculous thing lobbed on, sluggish and scarce manageable. It began to gape and cast its lashings—still it lobbed on. Its boards were actually parting as it drifted, rather than was directed, against the Spaniard’s side, and ropes and ladders were lowered for its crew to board by. To such a right and chastened frame of mind had terror of English guns and seamanship brought the once overbearing Don.
The prize proved to be the Santa Anna, homeward bound from Hispaniola, with a full cargo of mahogany, dye-woods and cotton, and carrying also a quantity of pearls and specie—altogether a very valuable seizure. She was in a dreadful state from the guns—dead and mangled bodies lying everywhere, and all the splendour of her interior fabric knocked into blackened splinters. The sight revolted Brion, and cured for the time being his battle-fever. But he was not allowed long to be affected by it, for the Admiral sent him off in one of the ship’s boats to desire Mr Candish to take command of the Tiger during his absence, for that he himself purposed to remain on the prize and navigate her into port. The young man was glad to escape, and without stipulating that he should be permitted to return and rejoin his leader on the Santa Anna. He preferred the thought of the Tiger, even without the companionship of Anthony Russe.
He had boarded, and given his message to the shipmaster, when some one came to him to say that Master Clerivault, who had been wounded in the fight and lay below, was incessantly crying for him, and that if he wished to see the man alive he had better come at once.