We had stopped rowing, and our men were resting with their hands on the heads and handles of their oars, waiting for the order to ship them, when, as the Spaniard went about, her side caught the oars on the right side of the galley, and I heard the sharp cracking and splintering of the wood of which they were made as they were broken in pieces, and the piercing cries, most lamentable to the ear, of the rowers as they were knocked from their benches and jammed together, a huddled, mangled mass of shrieking and cursing, of wounded and dying men.
Amid the din and outcry which attended this disaster to us, there arose the voice of Calvagh O’Halloran, the master of the rowers, encouraging, directing, and calming the others. What had befallen us was a serious matter, as it deprived us of any hope of getting away from the Capitana if our attack should prove unsuccessful.
I ran along the deck, telling our people to be of good heart, as all would yet be well; and, as nothing so inspired them as the war-cry of their tribe and the lust of fighting, I shouted loud and clear—
“O’Malley! O’Malley! O’Malley!”
The swinging of the Spaniard fended the galley off from her, so that there was a clear space for the breadth of a couple of oars, or a little more. As Calvagh got the rowers at work again, and The Cross of Blood went forward, the sides of the two ships grated together with a shock. They ground apart once again, and the water swished and swirled between them, foaming white and flecked with red as the blood of the rowers who had been injured dripped from the galley.
“On board, on board!” I cried. “A ring of gold to him who first boards her!” and I threw my battle-axe among her sailors. “Follow that!” I said.
The Irish were howling about me like hungry wolves, and The Cross of Blood shivered and trembled like a living thing as the rowers, Calvagh at their head, rushed from the benches, eager to revenge themselves for the death of their comrades of the oar, yelling hoarsely—
“O’Malley! O’Malley! O’Malley!”—the words stinging the ear like blows.
Now the sides of the vessels strained and groaned as again they smote together. The grappling-irons were fastened as they touched each other, and, regardless of the thrusts made at us, we together clambered up the Capitana’s side, entering by the breach over which the sailcloth had been stretched, and were immediately engaged in a hot and bloody fight, the issue of which stood in no kind of doubt from its commencement, as we far outnumbered the sailors in this part of the Spaniard.
One burly fellow came at me with a pike, but so uncertainly that I caught it from him with my left hand, and ran him through with the sword in my right. He dropped without a sound at my feet.