Sir Ludar / A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess

by Talbot Baines Reed

“He means to come to close quarters and board her,” said I.

Ludar laughed. His sportsman’s blood was up; and for the first time for many a day the care had vanished from his face, and left there a glow of sheer enjoyment.

“A cow might as well try to board a cat,” said he.

And he was right. For as the Ark bore down our way, blazing out at every galleon she passed, Don Alonzo, dropping clear of the line, put his nose in her course, and, so to say, bade her stand and answer him.

Then, for the first time that day, the Ark swerved on her tack and put out her nose too, so that presently we two lay well astern of the line, closing in on one another’s course. Then there was great joy on board the Rata. The noble youths shook their lovelocks and gripped their swords. The gunners lay with their eyes on the captain, waiting his signal to fire; and the men on the tops and in the rigging got ready their grappling tackle, and held their cutlasses betwixt their teeth, ready for a spring.

Ludar and I on the forecastle watched the Ark, as, half in the wind, she bore down our way. Her decks, like ours, were cleared for action, and above the gunwales we could spy many a bare head peeping over at us. I marvelled that she had not long since given us a shot; but, like the Spaniard, she seemed bent on close quarters, and was saving up for a hand-to-hand fight.

So, at least, we and all who watched them thought: when suddenly, scarce a cable’s length away, she put about full in the wind, and letting fly at us with every shot in her broadside, slipped gaily under our helm, on her way to regain the course she had left, and finish her career down the line of the Dons. Don Alonzo was so taken by surprise, and unready for this sudden move, that he had not a word to say. His broadside, when it went off, fell wide of the mark in the open sea, at the very moment when the English shot rang about his stern, riddling his sails, and knocking the gilded cross in shivers by the board. Nor did they give us shot only, for a cloud of cloth-yard arrows whistled through the rigging, picking off a dozen or so of the men perched there, and grazing the polished breastplates of not a few of the bewildered grandees on the quarter-deck.

Never shall I forget the howl of Spanish curses which greeted this misadventure. The grandees swore at the sailors, and bade them put about and give chase; the sailors swore at the grandees, and bade them come and try to turn the ship quicker than they, if they knew how. The gunners blamed the captain for holding them back, and the captain blamed men and crew alike for behaving like spoiled children, and forgetting their honour and dignity. As for Ludar, he was so tickled by the whole business that he laughed outright, and I had much ado to sober him in the presence of the angry foreigners.

But presently a message came for hands to go aft and look to the damage done to the stern; and we, partly from curiosity, partly from duty, went with them.

’Twas sad to see how the stately poop was battered about. Windows were knocked in, flags tumbled, guns unmounted, and, as I said, the great cross shot in pieces; while all around lay bodies of men dead or wounded. I think what troubled the Dons almost as much as the better sailing of the English was to find that these thick wooden walls of theirs were no proof against the enemy’s shot, which crashed through the stout timbers, sometimes letting daylight in, and here and there leaving us plenty of work to do to make them good against the inroad of the water.