When we had leisure to look at one another and see how we stood, we found we had been playing no child’s play. Ludar was pale, his sleeve was bloody, and his sword broken in two. As for me, drops were trickling through my hair and down my cheek, and I needed no astronomer to tell me the earth turned round. But the Don, when we came to him, was in a worse plight yet. For he lay where he had fallen, white as a marble statue, his eyes closed, his breath coming and going in quick, short gasps. As best we could we tore off his breastplate, and looked to the wound beneath. ’Twas but a gash, the ball having grazed the ribs and flattened itself on the steel beyond. But the blood he had lost thereby, and the feebleness of his ill-nourished body, made it more dangerous a wound by far than our vulgar scratches.
We caught the Englishman’s riderless horse, which grazed quietly near, and laid the gallant gently on his back; and so, painfully and slowly, brought him off.
Even as we did so, we could see on the crest of the far hills behind the figures of men on foot and horse moving our way; and, nearer at hand, when we stood and halted a moment, the sound of a trumpet broke the air.
There was no time to lose, verily, if these worn-out Dons were to leave the place alive. And as for Ludar and me, wounded and weak as we were, what chance was there for us to break through the lines and wander on foot in search of our lost ones?
“Humphrey,” said Ludar, guessing what was in my mind, “we sail with the Don to Scotland. Thence we will cross to the Glynns, and so be where we must be sooner than if we ventured by land.”
“So be it,” said I.
The sight of the wounded Don completed the panic which had already set in among the Spaniards at the report of the coming of the English.
“To sea! to sea!” they cried, and followed us as we bore their beloved captain to the bay.
The Gerona, Ludar told me, had been found on the coast, a half wreck, some weeks since, and, by dint of great labour and patching, had been made passably seaworthy.
“She will carry but three out of every four of this company,” said he. “After the nobles are all on board, there will be but place, I hear, for one hundred beside, and these must work at the oars. Lots have already been drawn, and, unless I mistake, ’twill be a hard parting betwixt those who go and those who stay.”