Chapter Five.
They encounter a Storm at Sea, and reach the Island of Cuba.
What had happened to Roger is already known to the reader, and what befell Harry after the explosion on board the Maria Dolorosa may be very shortly recounted.
The shock of his plunge into the cold water brought him to his senses in time to prevent him from drowning, and his first thought was to look after Roger; but his friend was nowhere to be seen. He shouted his name in vain for some time, and then started to swim towards his own ship, which lay quite near, in the faint hope that perhaps his friend might have been seen and rescued by her.
He made enquiries immediately on reaching the deck of the ship, but could elicit no information as to Roger’s whereabouts, and everybody on board was much too busy with his own work of fighting the three remaining Spanish ships to pay any attention to Harry. But he could not thus easily resign himself to Roger’s loss, and he peered over the lee bulwarks in an endeavour to discover his friend’s body, if it were still afloat.
He could, however, see nothing of it, and was beginning to fear that he had indeed lost his dear friend and the companion of his boyhood, when from the Gloria del Mundo, the Spanish ship which was nearest to him, he saw a boat lowered, which pulled away in the direction of a floating piece of wreckage which he had not until then noticed. He saw the boat row up close to this wreckage, and take from it a body which appeared to be hanging limply across it; and, looking more intently, he felt almost certain that the body was that of Roger. The boat pulled back to the Gloria del Mundo, and was hoisted on board.
If the body was indeed that of Roger, then, thank Heaven! he was safe for the time being; but the poor lad was nevertheless still in a very precarious situation, being on board a Spanish ship. Harry could see also that the vessel was in manifest distress, and had apparently not much longer to float.
It was some time after this that Cavendish, having at length disposed of his previous antagonist, ordered his ship to be laid alongside the Gloria del Mundo, with the object of capturing her out of hand, and making a prize of her before she sank. This was accordingly done, and the crash which Roger had heard, followed by the cries and musketry, was indeed, as he believed, the result of the English vessel being laid alongside and the rush of the English boarders.
It goes without saying that Harry was among the first to board, and he immediately commenced his search for Roger, but unluckily began it in a totally different quarter from that in which Roger had been placed.
The Gloria del Mundo was soon in the hands of the English, but it was found that she was sinking too fast for them to save her, and the boarders were at once recalled.