On deck a gruesome sight awaited us. The wreckage of the foremast and the yards lay where they had fallen and obscured the view of the fore-castle where a party of the company were hacking away at the wreck with their axes and swords. The ship was flush-decked in the waist, after the fashion of vessels in the carrying trade, and the men who worked the guns had thus been exposed to the worst of our fire which had raked them en echelon—as the French have it—from foremast to poop. Many of the cannon, small culverins and swivels of Italian make, were dismounted and lay askew, frowning inboard. Piled here and there were bodies, many lacking in human semblance and presenting a ghastly spectacle after the cleanly decks of the Great Griffin.
Moving carefully over the slippery decks, I came at last to the poop, below which stood one who, by reason of his immense stature, towered head and shoulders above those around him. I am not like to forget this early impression made upon my mind by Diego de Baçan; for, surrounded as he was by a scene of blood, there seemed some demoniac sympathy between his figure and the carnage about him. There was that in the contour of his face which reminded me of the doughty Ojeda, possessing a hideous beauty like only to that of the evil one. The sun behind him glinted on the visor of his morion from the shadow of which his eyes gleamed darkly. His black beard, which came at two points, framed in a jaw set squarely enough on his great neck, and his wide shoulders even over-topped mine both for breadth and height. He leaned easily with one hand upon the rail, looking, in his polished breast piece, so splendid that I could not but mark the difference between his garb and mine, which was but that of the merchant seaman, ungarnished by any trappings of war.
Scorning the salute I proffered him, he spoke coldly, in English, without further ado.
“You would speak with me, señor?”
“My mission,” I replied, “is with the commander of this ship. If you are he, you will go with me yonder.”
“The commander of the San Cristobal is dead. I am Don Diego de Baçan. But I will go aboard no heretic pirato.”
“We are no pirato, señor,” said I calmly, “but a free sailer of Her Majesty, Elizabeth of England, whom you have attacked without warrant.”
“And if I will not go?” Here he drew himself up to his great height, folded his arms and frowned at me defiantly, while a dozen or so of his pikemen stood at his back and scowled fiercely. But, in my position, black looks caused no tremors.
“If you will not come,” I answered steadily, “my orders are to bring you,—this I will do; failing to return before the next stroke of the bell, my captain will sink you as he would a rotten pinnace.”
He looked about him at the scene of havoc, and smiled bitterly. Then, with a word to his pikemen, who still surrounded us, his manner changed.