“Do you surrender, señor?”
“I will, if you will promise me good guerra, señor,” replied the Spaniard, dexterously parrying the thrust of a pikeman and running his antagonist neatly through the shoulder.
“Then stop, men; hold your hands, and leave this cavalier to me,” cried George, dashing in and striking up the points of the English weapons that still threatened the Spaniard. Then, as the men drew sullenly and unwillingly back, the young captain advanced, with lowered point, and his left hand held out. “Your sword, señor,” he demanded. “On the word of an Englishman, I promise you buena guerra.”
Whereupon the Don, taking his sword by the point, tendered it, hilt first, with a bow, to George, who tucked it under his left arm, bowing in turn as he received it. And so the Santa Maria, fifty tons bigger than the Nonsuch, and carrying even more guns, with a crew which, at the beginning of the action, had numbered one hundred and thirty, became the first prize of George’s prowess and that of the Devon mastiffs.
Chapter Six.
How they came to a desert island and buried their treasure.
The ships being still held fast together by the chains of the grappling irons, and driving slowly down the channel before the wind, George first ordered the Nonsuch to be brought to an anchor; and when this was done he further instructed Dyer to take steps for the effectual securing of the unwounded prisoners, and the tending of the wounded on both sides. Then, inviting the officer who had surrendered to him—and whom he rightly assumed to be the captain of the prize—to accompany him into the state cabin of the captured ship, he formally introduced himself as Señor Don George Saint Leger, an Englishman, and captain of the ship Nonsuch; the stranger returning the compliment by explaining that he was Señor Don Pasquale Alfonso Maria Francisco of Albuquerque, a servant of his Most Catholic Majesty, Philip of Spain, and commander of the ship Santa Maria, dispatched from Cadiz by his Majesty to convey munitions of various descriptions to his Majesty’s possessions in the Western Indies. And when requested to specify more particularly of what those munitions consisted, Don Pasquale, etcetera, etcetera, mentioned wines, cloths, silk, and brocades of various descriptions, salt, leather, articles of furniture, arms and ammunition, and—he hesitated, whereupon George gently invited him to complete his enumeration.
“Before I do so, señor,” remarked Don Pasquale, “I should like to ask what you intend to do with my ship, now that you have captured her.”