As Don Alonzo's ship hove near, and when the cloud of smoke from her discharged guns had lifted, the archers in her fighting-tops fired down their arrow shafts in the endeavour to pick off such of the English officers as presented themselves on the poop-deck. Sir Richard Grenville was struck many times, but his body armour was well forged, and although he indeed had received many slight wounds on hands and neck and face, yet he was practically unhurt, and his hoarse voice could be heard amid the battle's thunder cheering his men and bidding them fight on.
His son Roland had been wounded by a musket-shot in his right arm, but, like Sir Richard, he cared not so long as he had breath in him to fight; so he took his sword in his left hand, and ever when any Spaniards attempted to make an entrance upon the decks he was ready to repel them, with Timothy Trollope and Gilbert Oglander shoulder to shoulder with him, forming a human barrier through which no Don, howsoever bold, might pass.
Gilbert Oglander became conscious that as Don Alonzo's galleon came near, there was one archer in her mizzen-top who had, as it seemed, singled him out from among his companions. Arrow after arrow struck with a sharp ring upon his breastplate; and as he moved along the deck to encounter new foes, again and again an arrow would buzz past him, always from the same direction.
The Spaniards, secure in the knowledge that the Revenge was helpless, went about the fighting more slowly as evening drew upon them. It was as if they thought to prolong their victim's life, and wished only to see for how much time the little Revenge would hold out against them. During a lull in the fight Sir Richard Grenville ordered his men to clear the decks of wreckage, and to cast overboard the bodies of the slain. Water was served round, together with bread and onions. As Gilbert Oglander was carrying a flagon of water to one of his wounded comrades who lay in the scuppers, an arrow struck the flagon and dashed it from his grasp. He picked the empty vessel up and returned to the water-butt to refill it. Again as he passed aft an arrow struck him, this time making a deep dent in his morion. And at that moment young Robin Redfern, with a kerchief bound round his bleeding head, came up to him and touched him on the arm.
"Master," the lad cried, "I pray you have a care how you expose yourself to the aim of the archer who hath just fired at you. His arrows have pursued you this long while past. And—and—prithee, Master Gilbert, dost know who 'tis?"
"Nay, how should I know one Spaniard from another?" Gilbert asked, passing on towards the wounded man. But Robin held him.
"Hark you, my master," cried the lad, "I have seen his face. I saw it but a few moments ago, and, as I live, 'tis the face of your own cousin, Master Philip Oglander!"
Now Gilbert, despite the excitement of the battle had not forgotten Drusilla's letter that was nestling within his doublet under the protection of his breastplate. His thoughts had gone more than once to his home and to the remembrance of his uncle's trickery, and this had increased by an hundredfold his hatred of all friends of Spain, and he had fought with a spirit of personal vengeance as well as with the desire to help his fellow-countrymen and his Queen in this battle against their dread enemy. For an instant he doubted the truth of what Robin had told him, and when he had served the wounded man with his drink of water, and helped him down to the crowded cockpit, he looked out through one of the portholes in search of his cousin in the galleon's tops. But the place where his enemy had stood was now cleared of men, and Philip Oglander was nowhere to be seen.
As he was mounting the ladder-stairs to regain the deck, he came upon a man climbing painfully upward with a sword between his teeth. Putting his arm about the man's body to assist him, he said:
"Art wounded, my master?"