“O’Malley! O’Malley! O’Malley!” I cried, and quicker than a flash, before the English had got over the suddenness of the movement, our men, with de Vilela and myself at their head, had leaped on board of her.
With thrust of sword and blow of battle-axe we made good our footing on the deck, and for a space the English fell back before us. Their captain, a towering figure in armour, save for his head, on which was a broad cap with a dancing plume of feathers in it, rallied them, and led them on at us, shouting for St. George and England.
They were more in number than ourselves, but despair nerved our arms, so that we withstood them, albeit we were hard pressed, and the fighting was terrible beyond all words. I sought to engage the captain, but de Vilela was before me.
Then there occurred an unexpected and almost unheard-of and incredible thing.
I knew the voice at once, and, turning in the direction from whence it came, and thus being partly off my guard, could not altogether ward off the dart of a sword, so that I was wounded in the throat, and, had it been but a little truer, would have been slain.
Above the clang of meeting weapons and the rattle of armour and the shouts and sobs and the catchings for breath of the foemen, the voice of my mistress was heard crying in the tongue of the Irish:
“Let the O’Malleys divide, and stand on each side of the ship!”
It was a difficult matter in itself to accomplish, and some there were of the Irish who were unable to do so; but such of us who could obeyed her command without pausing to try to understand what she would be at.
Then there came forth a great tongue of fire, a blinding cloud of smoke, and so tremendous a report that the ship was shaken from stem to stern.
And this is what had taken place: