'A gunner!' bawled the Marquis. 'At once a gunner, to sink me that infernal pirate into Hell.'
A man stood briskly forward. From the rear came a gleam of light, and a lantern was passed forward from hand to hand until it reached the gunner. He snatched it, ignited from its flames a length of fuse, then stepped to the nearest gun.
'Wait,' the Marquis ordered. 'Wait until she is abreast.'
But by the light of the lantern the gunner perceived at once that waiting could avail them nothing. With an imprecation he sprang to the nearest gun, shed light upon the touch–hole, and again passed on. Thus from gun to gun he sped until he had reached the last. Then he came back, swinging the lantern in one hand and the spluttering fuse in the other, so slowly that the Marquis was moved to frenzy.
Not a hundred yards away the Maria Gloriosa was slowly passing, her hull a dark shadow, her sails faintly grey above.
'Make haste, fool! Make haste! Touch them off!' roared the Admiral of the Ocean–Sea.
'Look for yourself, Excellency.' The gunner set down the lantern on the gun so that its light fell directly upon the touch–hole. 'Spiked. A soft nail has been rammed home. It is the same with all of them.'
The Admiral of the Ocean–Sea swore with the picturesque and horrible fervour that only a Spaniard can achieve. 'He forgets nothing, that endemonized pirate dog.'
A musket–shot, carefully aimed by a buccaneer from the bulwarks of the passing ship, came to shatter the lantern. It was followed by an ironic cheer and a burst of still more ironic laughter from the deck of the Maria Gloriosa as she passed on her stately way through the Dragon's Jaw to the open sea.