They rushed against a cluster of mere sailor-men, half armed, who had been posted there to keep them out of the way. They were hardly soldiers, although they were fierce enough; and they were mere cattle before the rush of Ben o' Coventry and his mighty followers. The Welshmen spared none of them; and soon the French in the deep waist of La Belle Calaise, pressing forward to reinforce their half-defeated boarders, were suddenly startled by a deadly shower of darts and arrows that fell upon them from their own forecastle. Then, as they turned in dismay, they shouted to their comrades upon the Golden Horn:
"Back! back! lest our own ship be lost. The English have boarded us!"
There was a moment of hesitation; and so at that critical moment no help came to the remaining Frenchmen in the waist of the Golden Horn. They were even outnumbered, since all the archers in the wooden forts fore and aft, twanging their deadly bows almost in safety, counted against the bewildered boarders. No more knights came down from La Belle Calaise. The common men were falling like corn before the reaper.
"On!" shouted Richard. "It is our fight now! Short work is good work!"
The O'Rourke yelled something in the old Erse tongue, and his giants followed him as he fought his way to the side of Richard Neville; but David Griffith summoned his remaining Welshmen, and was followed also by two score of Kentish bowmen, as he hastened forward to join Ben o' Coventry and his daring fellows on the forecastle of La Belle Calaise. It was time, for there were good French knights yet left to lead in a desperate attempt to dislodge them. It was, however, as if the deck or roof of that wooden fort, made with bulwarks and barricades to protect it against all enemies of France, had been just as well prepared to be held by an English garrison. Moreover, all manner of weapons had been put there, ready for use; and among these were pikes and lances with which the Welshmen could thrust at the men who tried to climb the ladders from the waist, while the archers shot for dear life, unerringly.
"My Lord Beaumont," shouted one of the French men-at-arms, "all of our boarders on the English ship are down or taken. Not one is left. Here come the Neville and his tigers. God and St. Denis! We are lost!"
"Courage!" returned Beaumont. "Fight on; we shall overcome them yet!"
But a heavy mace, hurled by a big Cornishman on the forecastle, at that moment smote him on the helm. He fell stunned, while his dismayed comrades shrank back from the storm of English arrows and from the mad rush of Richard and his men-at-arms and the O'Rourke and his Irish axemen.
The French were actually beaten in detail, their greater numbers at no time doing them any good.