Alas! we need scarcely advert to the desperation of the conflict which ensued—a conflict from which we recoil; for it was Englishmen and Scotsmen who then fought against each other, and fought as they alone can fight.
The yetlan guns soon became so hot that Wad reported to the admiral, "that they were bouncing off their stocks, and tearing their breechings like pack-thread."
We are told that, fearless of the numerical force and superiority of the enemy, old Andrew Wood led the way to the "Inglish deckis with his twa-handed quhinger," and that for twelve hours, with sword and pike, crossbow and battle-axe, a deadly conflict was maintained; and that they had often to retire from sheer exhaustion, and to free their blood-stained decks from the dead and wounded; "and there they fought," saith Pitscottie, who knew the admiral well, "frae the rising of the sun till the going down of the same, in the long summer's day, while all the men and women that dwelt near the coast-side stood and beheld the fighting, which was terrible to see."
The sun sank behind the hills of Fife, and those persons who crowded on the steeple of Crail and the summit of Kincraig, saw the five grappled ships abandoned to the wind and current, drifting off towards the north. They saw the blue flag of Scotland and the white English ensign floating side by side; they could see the incessant gleaming of steel, and the pale smoke that broke upward in white curls from time to time, but they knew not how the tide of battle turned, or to whom red Victory held out her bloody wreath.
Night came down on the echoing deep, and when morning dawned the good folk of the East Neuk, pale with watching, and fired by expectation, could see no trace of the hostile ships; for by that time they had drifted like a huge and gory raft, or a floating hecatomb, to the mouth of the Tay. There, after casting off to refit and reeve anew their cut and torn rigging, again the trumpets sounded, and again they grappled at sunrise; and Wood ordered that the English ships should be lashed "with cables" to his own—that they should all go down together rather than any one should escape.
The Scots and English were repeatedly in possession of each other's decks, and incredible valour was exhibited in the many hand-to-hand conflicts that ensued amid the general mêlée; many a Scottish mariner was "spritsail yarded," as they termed it, by being pinned in the head or breast by the clothyard shafts of Sir Stephen's archers, who shot from the tops and poops; and many an Englishman was scotched (i.e., cut or slashed by the sword or Jedwood axe), a phrase we first find in Shakespeare, but which had long previously been common in England, for a wound received in the Scottish wars.
Tall Dick Selby, with his poleaxe, displayed to advantage the agility and prowess which made him the lion of the Moorfields and Finsbury; and strong in the belief of a blessed Paternoster, bought in the Row beside St. Paul's, and bound about his better wrist, he had hewed a way almost to the poop of the Yellow Frigate, when he was killed by Sir David Falconer, who there recognised Edmund Howard fighting bravely against great odds, and keeping his back to the mizenmast; and there, after doing all in his power by voice and deed to save him, he had the mortification of seeing him hewn almost to pieces by the crew of the Flower.
Sir Fulke of Fulkeshall was also slain, and there was scarcely a noble or wealthy family in London that did not lose a relative in this desperate conflict.
Sir Stephen Bull, tall, powerful, and brave as a Hector, sought everywhere for old Sir Andrew Wood, reserving his sword and strength for him alone; and they encountered each other no less than six times, but were always separated by the furious pressure of those around them; for Miles le Furnival, John of Lynne, and others, on one side, Sir Alexander Mathieson, Robert Barton, and Falconer, on the other, were always rushing on, and taking part in the bloody game, though all of them were severely wounded, and covered with blood and bandages.
"Had we no better cast off the grapples," cried Archy of Anster, rushing to the admiral, who was leaning, breathless, against the taffrail of the Unicorn, with his sword in his hand.