In the Days of Drake

by J. S. Fletcher

“’Tis Francis Drake and no other!” cried one. “I know him by the gold band round his scarlet cap. He always wears that at sea. Now may God be praised for this deliverance.”

But there was much to be done ere our deliverance could be accomplished. Nay, indeed, it seemed as if our cruel jailers were minded to murder us before ever help would come, for they proceeded to beat us so unmercifully with their whips that many of us sank down faint and bleeding, and lay like dead men. But the rest of us kept up because of the fierce excitement.

Presently the English ship was within a boat’s length of us, and then she slowly crashed against our side, the brass muzzles of her guns, in some cases, coming through our ports. Meanwhile the Spaniards had not been idle, for their gunners were plying their cannon with all possible speed, and the noise and confusion was horrible. But yet never a shot did the Englishman fire, but their ship closed steadily upon us. At last we heard the grappling-irons thrown out and made fast, and knew that the two ships were locked together, like lions that fasten teeth and claws in each other and will not loose their grip till death comes.

Then began a noise and confusion as if all the devils of hell had suddenly been let loose. We heard the shouts of the Englishmen, hoarse and deep, and the shriller cries of the Spaniards, above the roaring of the guns. On deck there sounded the wild rush and hurry of feet as the combatants were driven hither and thither. The overseers had thrown down their whips and fled to the upper decks as soon as the English boarded, and now we captives sat breathless and bleeding, listening to the noise above us and longing for release, so that we too might join in the fight.

Suddenly there leapt through one of the ports a brawny Englishman, armed not with sword or pike, but with hammer and chisel, and he was speedily followed by half-a-dozen more, armed in similar fashion.

“Are there Englishmen here?” roared the first as he tumbled in amongst us. “Speak, lads, if ye be English!”

And at that there went up such a roar as was like to burst open the deck above us. Men stretched out their hands and arms to these great English sailors as if they were angels, and prayed them to knock off their bonds. So they, staring stupidly at us for a moment,—as is the manner of Englishmen when they see something which they do not understand,—suddenly fell to and knocked away our chains and padlocks, while we wept over them and blessed them as our saviors. And meanwhile others had handed in pikes and swords and glaives through the ports, and others were guarding the ladder against the Spaniards, in case any of them should come below. But they were too busy on the upper decks to have even a thought of us, and so we were uninterrupted, and ere long every man of us was free of his chains.

“Now, lads!” cried the big man who had first leapt in upon us, “can ye fight, or are ye too weak for a brush? If any man thinks he can hold pike or sword, let him pick his weapon and follow me.”

Some of us could fight and some could not. Here and there a man was only released from his chains to fall upon the deck and die. Others, suddenly made free, found on striving to rise from the benches that the use of their legs was gone. Others again, whose minds had suffered under those long months of fiendish torture, were no sooner released than they became utterly mad, and fell to laughing and gibbering at their preservers. But many of us, weak as we were, felt the strength of ten men come into our arms, and we seized eagerly upon the weapons offered to us, and followed the sailors up the gangway with a fierce resolve to call our late oppressors to a final account.

On the upper deck the fight was raging furiously. The Spaniards, furious and desperate, were massed together in a solid body, keeping back the Englishmen by sheer skill. Already between the gangways and the bulwarks lay a great heap of dead and dying. High above the combatants on the poop stood Nunez, his pale face set and drawn, watching the progress of the fight with gleaming eyes and compressed lips. From the tops the sharp-shooters were pouring showers of arrows into the English ship, but the guns had ceased, and the gunners lay dead beside them.