Two ships became alive and fought for Roanoke Island.
“Captain Vytal, they are here!”
“How near, Dyonis?”
“So near that in another instant they will board us.”
“To arms, then!”
“Ay,” and a whisper ran from mouth to mouth along the deck. There was a low click as of pistol-triggers cocking, and fifty dark shadows, which had lain prone behind the bulwark, rose, each to one knee.
The ships lay breast to breast, feeling each other’s sides. And suddenly the glare of a hundred new-lit torches illumined the Spanish deck; but the Admiral’s bulwark shielded her ambush from the light.
Without warning, a line of steel corselets and morions, flashing in the radiance, started forward from the Madre de Dios, started, rolled on, and rose to the bulwark as a silver wave rises in the moonlight, superb, brilliant, invincible, vaunting itself before the sable shore. And, like moon-rays playing across the crest, a hundred swords flashed high.
The silver surf, crashing, broke. Hidden rocks had awaited it in darkness. Baffled, it lashed them, rose, fell, dispersed, concentrated—a wild seethe of tormented fury.