Two Gallant Sons of Devon: A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess

by Harry Collingwood

So Dick went up on the poop and, stationing himself to windward, conned the ship as she beat in toward the Boca Chica against the fast-failing land breeze. But, good ship as the Adventure was, her progress was exasperatingly slow, as was that of all ships of that date when they attempted to beat up against a foul wind; for neither the form of the hull nor the cut of the sails was at that day favourable to such a manoeuvre, and the ship was still a good mile from the harbour’s mouth when the land breeze suddenly failed, and she was left helplessly wallowing upon the oily swell outside.

This, of course, was exasperating enough; for when deeds of desperate emprise are toward it is well to carry them through before the enthusiasm has time to cool. But it could not be helped, the wind was dead, and the ship could not be handled now until the sea breeze sprang up; and, after all, the delay was not an unmitigated misfortune, for it ensured to the crew time enough to complete their preparations for the coming fight and take breakfast afterward; and even at that day it was fully recognised that an Englishman fights best when his hunger has been satisfied. So they finished the work upon which they were engaged, and then went quietly to breakfast, which meal they were able to dispose of comfortably before a cry from the deck apprised them of the arrival of the sea breeze.

Yes; there it came, far away in the offing, ruling the horizon as a band of dark blue that grew lighter and lighter still along its landward edge, until it stopped short at a distance of about two miles from the shore, blowing fresh right up to a certain well-defined point, between which and the land all was gleaming, glassy swell, unruffled by even so much as a cat’s-paw. But the boundary line which divided breeze from calm was not stationary by any means, on the contrary, it was creeping nearer rapidly. When Bascomb came up on the poop he merely glanced at it for a moment and then called to the seamen to trim the yards in readiness to meet it. By the time that this had been done the line of demarcation was so near that the musical tinkling of the advancing ripples could be distinctly heard, although the sails still hung limp, idly flapping to the roll of the ship. Another minute, however, sufficed, then with a gentle preliminary rustling the canvas filled, the blue ripples reached the ship, passed inshore of her, and she began to draw slowly through the water and her helm was put up to keep her away for the narrow harbour entrance.

“Starboard you may,” said Dick to the helmsman, when the ship had presently fallen square off before the fast-freshening breeze; “we must shave that low point on the left quite closely, for that is where the channel runs, and there is a small shoal right in the mouth of the fairway which we must avoid. So! that will do; now, steady as you go. Mr Bascomb, you see that dark object just opening out over the southernmost end of Tierra Bomba? Well, that is the shore battery, and as it possesses certain small ordnance, such as falconets and swivels, which we could not spare the time to destroy, I would recommend that, as we must pass it close, the men be instructed to lie down behind the bulwarks as we sail by, lest haply any of them be hit; for I make no doubt that they will discharge at us every piece they have as we pass.”

“Say you so?” returned Bascomb. “Then, by the Lord Harry, we will be beforehand with them. Ho, there! Load the larboard broadside of ordnance, great and small, and train your pieces to sweep the top of yonder battery as we pass. We cannot afford to risk the loss of any of our number through a mistaken sense of magnanimity.”

With swelling sails distended by the ever-freshening sea breeze, the Adventure now swept boldly in for the mouth of the Boca Chica, and presently a curl of white water revealed the presence of the shoal of which Dick Chichester had spoken, right in the middle of the fairway. Dick directed the helmsman to steer to the north of this, between it and the island of Tierra Bomba, with its swelling wood-crowned heights. Dick glanced aloft at the castle which crowned the summit of the southernmost hill, but although the golden flag of Spain flaunted itself insolently in the breeze from the flagstaff on its northern turret, not a man was to be seen upon the parapet. Many of the embrasures, one-half of which they could now see, had been destroyed by the bursting of the ordnance, and it soon became clear that none of its garrison intended to make any effort to dispute the passage of the English ship. Whether the garrison of the battery down on the beach would be less prudent still remained to be seen, but one thing was perfectly clear, and that was that the Spanish soldiery were very busy upon the gun platform, their movements being directed by a tall man in a full suit of black armour, the helmet of which was surmounted by a splendid plume of long crimson feathers. The English, however, were not left long in doubt as to the intentions of this individual, who was, doubtless, the commander of the garrison; for as the ship swept along the narrow channel, hugging the northern shore closely, and every moment shortening the distance between the battery and herself, he was seen to draw his sword, which flashed like a white flame in the brilliant sunshine as he waved it above his head, and the next moment a perfect storm of bullets from falcon and falconet, patarero, saker, and swivel, came hurtling from the battery across the narrow water toward the ship. But the gallant cavalier had been just a trifle too eager to display his valour, for most of the missiles fell short, having been fired at rather too long a range, while those which hit were so nearly spent that only a few of them lodged in the solid woodwork of the ship’s bulwarks, and not a man on board was hit.

“Now, men,” roared Bascomb, “give yonder presumptuous fool a lesson; fire as your guns come to bear, and not before. I want that parapet swept clean!”

And swept clean it was, the English holding their fire and the ship sweeping on in grim, inexorable silence until she was within some two hundred feet of the structure, when all her larboard ordnance, great and small, bellowed and barked back its answer. As the smoke drove away ahead before the wind the wall was seen to crumble into dust under the impact of the heavy iron shot, while the lighter missiles mowed down the soldiers like corn beneath the sickle, until not a man was left standing upon his feet, even the magnifico in armour going down before the hail of iron and lead, to say nothing of the Spanish standard, the staff of which was cut clean in two, so that it toppled over and fell, carrying the flag with it, to the ground at the base of the wall.

“So much for thicky!” exclaimed Bascomb, relapsing into broad Devon for a moment, under the influence of excitement. “If it weren’t that we have a long and hot morning’s work before us I would anchor the ship, land a party, and blow their footy batteries into the air. But perhaps we may have time to do that when we come back this way. Now, my masters, load again, this time with double charges, consisting of a half-keg of bullets to each culverin, with a chain shot on top, and the smaller ordnance in proportion. We will not fire again, if we can help it, until we run alongside the galleon, and not then until we rub sides with her.”

The ship had by this time traversed so much of the Boca that it became necessary for her to shift her helm in order to avoid grounding upon a sandspit that stretched athwart her course, and here the advantage and value of Dick Chichester’s previous observations became apparent; for so sharp was the bend, and so little was there to indicate the existence of the shoal, that if Dick had not previously had the opportunity to note its position, the ship would undoubtedly have driven right upon it, under full sail, when she would certainly have been in an exceedingly awkward predicament, and might even have been lost, presuming the Spaniards to have been courageous enough to attack her while placed at so serious a disadvantage. But she was not allowed to get into any such awkward situation; for Dick had noticed everything connected with the dangers of the harbour, while looking out and watching from the summit of the hill on Tierra Bomba, and he carried a complete and perfectly accurate chart of the harbour in his head, in addition to the one which he and Marshall had made together. The helm was, therefore, shifted at the proper moment, and the ship swerved away in a south-easterly direction, making as though for the middle of the lower bay.