"'Tis men such as Jeff that have won England her glory on the main," declared Hartop, as he watched the man striding along the deck. Even as his eyes rested upon him, he saw Dimsdale stagger and fall, with an arrow, fired from the tops of one of the Spaniards, piercing his temple. A youth, hastening forward, stumbled over the fallen man, rose to his feet, looked into Dimsdale's face and passed on. The youth was Gilbert Oglander, who with grimy, powder-stained countenance, had come up on deck, utterly tired out by his hard work below. He entered the forecastle and waited his turn for a drink of water.
"What, art stationed below decks, Master Oglander?" questioned Jacob Hartop. "Methinks your better place were up here where there be boarders to repel. There be many who can carry powder on board, but few who have the skill to wield a sword or shoot an arrow as thou hast, my master."
"In truth, 'twas that very thought that brought me hither," said Gilbert. "And with the more reason, in that the powder is not now so plentiful or the gunners so many that those I have left below cannot be quickly enough served by the ship's boys. Hast seen aught of Timothy Trollope, Master Hartop?"
Jacob shook his head, but Robin Redfern, hearing the question, answered, as he pointed outward along the upper deck to where, under the larboard bulwarks, a half-dozen of Sir Richard Grenville's men were fighting amid a clash of arms with some score of Spaniards who had made an entrance upon the Revenge:
"So please you, sir, he is yonder, where, as I have seen with my own eyes, he hath slain a full dozen Spaniards."
Without waiting for his much-needed drink of water, Gilbert snatched up a morion that lay at his feet, clapped it upon his bare head, unsheathed his sword, and ran out to join in the fray. Jacob Hartop, smiling at the lad's impetuous eagerness, turned to the water-butt and took the proffered dipper from Robin Redfern's hand.
Robin's face was very pale, and there was a strange light in his grave, gray eyes. He glanced quickly round the cabin, and presently darted into the further corner, went down upon his knees in the dark, and after a moment emerged gripping a little sword in his right hand, and strode to the door. Jacob Hartop stretched out his hand to stop the boy, guessing his purpose, but Robin escaped him and ran out, mingling with the fighting crowd.
Very soon afterwards Hartop was again at his gun on the starboard side of the forecastle deck. At the moment there was a slight lull in the battle. A galleon that had been grappled to this side of the Revenge for an hour or more, and was now almost a total wreck, was being drawn off to give place to a mighty ship which had stood by from the time of the opening of the battle, and whose decks were crowded with soldiers. Glancing out through the gap thus made, Hartop saw at some distance away a little ship flying the flag of St. George. She seemed to be hovering near, either to see the success of the fight, or else, which was more probable, to do what she might to rescue the Revenge from the grip of her overpowering enemies. Hartop knew the little ship. He had seen her many times during the voyage out from England and also at the anchorage at Flores. It was Jacob Whiddon's Pilgrim.
The great galleon which now closed in to the attack was the St. Paul, the flag-ship of Don Alonzo de Bassan, a brother of the renowned Marquis of Santa Cruz, and King Philip's chosen admiral. Already the Revenge's bowsprit had been shot away, her foremast had fallen by the board, and her main topmast was lying across her main-deck with two Englishmen and seven Spaniards crashed under its weight. Her sails were in ribbons, and her riggings were in a hopeless tangle of broken rope; her bulwarks had great yawning gaps in them, yet still her gallant flag waved gloriously, albeit with many shot-holes in it, over her poop. And now the St. Paul opened fire upon her, first from her chase-guns that shot out their great stone balls, and then, as she swung round, from her full broadside. Sir Richard Granville's mizzen-mast, which had beforetime been sorely hacked and splintered, fell with a crash. And now she lay heaving lazily on the swell of the ocean, with but the ragged stumps of her three masts showing above the level of her shattered hull, and her ship's company in their sadly reduced numbers showing still a sturdy and dauntless front, and ever persistently fighting on. The sea round about her was so strewn with wreckage that the galleons could not now come close to her as they had done at the first, but lay round her in a ring, firing into her or sending out their boats crowded with soldiers to board her, the beams of the setting sun shining on their morions and body armour, and glancing on the blades of their drawn swords.