Of course all disguise and concealment was now at an end; the pirate had seen them, but—too late! She was now less than a cable’s length distant from the Elizabeth, and as she was bearing up, and before even her men could leap to their quarters, the Elizabeth had luffed and delivered her starboard broadside with murderous effect. Down came the mainmast, severed just above the deck, bringing the fore-topgallant-mast with it; down on her crowded decks crashed the wreckage, adding its own quota of killed and wounded to that effected by the guns of the English vessel.
The flag-ship had already borne up, and now came foaming down to the scene of the combat, with the Tiger lumbering along astern.
The pitchy blackness of the night was illuminated redly and vividly by the flashes of the guns. The Black Pearl, finding escape impossible, had determined to fight to the bitter end. Her guns were run out, and they at once opened a galling and well-directed fire upon the Elizabeth, which replied in kind, and the night air resounded with the report of cannon and small-arms, and was rent with cries, groans, and screams from the wounded, and shouts and oaths from all.
The flag-ship now arrived on the scene, and, taking a wide sweep and luffing up with main-topsail aback under the stern of the Black Pearl, poured in a raking broadside that traversed the whole length of the pirate’s decks, leaving them a very shambles of dead and wounded.
The artillery tight did not last very long. Anxious to capture José Leirya alive, Cavendish—perhaps not too well advisedly—laid his ship alongside the schooner, and poured his men on to the pirate’s decks.
Seeing this, the captain of the Elizabeth, not to be behindhand, did the same. Ordering his men away from the guns, and forming them up, he led them in person over the side on to the decks of the Pearl, which was by this time a scene of dreadful carnage. Blood was everywhere; her planking was so slimy with it that men slipped and fell in it. It ran in little rivulets from the scuppers.
Roger, who followed close upon the heels of the captain, thought involuntarily of William Evans’s description of how José Leirya had captured this very vessel, cutting her out from under San Juan fort in Puerto Rico; and his tale of how freely the blood flowed on these same decks then.
But he had no time for mere thought; his attention was wholly taken up with the fighting, and the problem of how to avoid being impaled or cut down by some furious pirate.
The villains knew that they were fighting with halters round their necks, and laid about them like very demons from the pit. Cut and thrust, cut and thrust, they came at the Englishmen, and, headed by José himself, for several moments swept the invaders before them.
Roger was, as ever, well in the front rank of the combatants, and was carrying himself right manfully, when he saw one of his countrymen slip and fall in a pool of blood, losing his sword as he fell. A burly black-bearded ruffian, whom he had been engaging, instantly set his foot on the prostrate body, and shortened his hanger to thrust him through; but Roger, who was engaged with another pirate, nimbly evaded the blow aimed at him, and, with one spring, like a young leopard, was on the would-be slayer, and, taking him before he could turn, passed his sword through the pirate’s body with such force that it penetrated to the hilt, while both rescuer and corpse went rolling to the deck together. Roger disencumbered himself from the dead body, and, setting his foot upon it, pulled violently at his sword to get it free again.