Across the Salt Seas: A Romance of the War of Succession

by John Bloundelle-Burton

There she lay--Hopson by now in the Monmouth, to which he had been forced to transfer his flag, so sad a ruin was she--listing over to her wounded starboard side, into which the water poured in volumes, it becoming tinged as it mixed with the blood in her scuppers; her yards and masts were charred sticks; black bits of sooty, greasy matter, which had once been her white sails, floated down slowly to the waves and fell upon and dissolved into them. Also her shrouds were but burnt pieces of rope and twine now. Upon her deck there were stretched a hundred and twenty men, dead or dying. And with the Pembroke it was almost as bad. We were shattered and bruised, our foremast gone, our own sails shot through and through, and hanging over the sides like winding sheets, our own decks charnel houses. Yet we had won the fight, the day was ours, the galleons our booty.

But were they? That was the question!

'Twas true, they were all as we had first seen them, though some, we noticed, had been run ashore, perhaps to give them a chance of hurriedly landing some of their cargo; but, alas! we noticed now that they were all aflame, were burning fiercely.

And we knew well enough what this meant--meant that the French and Spaniards had set them on fire so that we should benefit nothing through their falling into our hands. And all of us saw it at the same time--Rooke saw it, Hopson saw it--every man on board our English decks who was still alive saw and understood.

By God's mercy the breeze was still blowing into the strait. Some of us still had some sail left clinging to our bruised and battered yards; enough to take us farther in, enough to enable the boarding parties to row ashore, to reach those burning ships, to save something, surely!

From all the ships' sides as we ran up as far as we could toward where they lay, came now the hoarse grating of the ropes running through the blocks as the boats were lowered. Into those boats leaped swarms of men, their cutlasses ready, their pistols in their hands, their eyes inflamed with the lust of plunder, wild oaths and jokes, curses--and, sometimes, prayers that we were not too late--upon their lips.

And in our cutter I went, too--appointed to the command of her in place of the lieutenant who should have taken that command, but who now lay dead upon the Pembroke's deck, a dozen balls in his body.

Jostling one another--for there were scores of boats lowered by now, and all making their way, under either sail or the seamen's brawny arms, to where those burning galleons lay--we rushed through the half mile of water that separated us from them, all eager to board and be amongst the spoil. And woe, I thought, to him or them who, when we were there, should strive to bar our entrance! Our blood was up, fevered by the carnage of the earlier hours; woe to them who endeavoured to prevent our final triumph! Through wreckage of all kinds we went, spars, yards and masts, military tops floating like tubs, dead men face upward, living men clinging to oars and overturned boats and shrieking to be saved, while ever still, in front of us, the galleons burned and blazed--one blew up as we neared it, another, spouting flames from port and window and burning to the water's edge, sank swiftly and in a moment beneath the water.

But at last we were up to them, were beneath their bows, could see their great figureheads and read their names--most of them so terribly sacred that one wondered that even Spaniards should so dare to profane those holy words by using them for their ships!

And now some orders were issued by a grey-haired officer to those close by. The boarding parties were told off in boats of twos and threes to the different vessels flaming before our eyes. The one which I commanded was directed to a great vessel of three decks, having above her upper one a huge poop-royal, and named--heavens, what a name for a ship!--La Sacra Familia. And as we swept toward them all we saw that one mercy was now to be vouchsafed. There would be no further slaughter here; no need for more shedding of blood. The vessels were not defended; those who had set fire to them had undoubtedly fled.