“Come back, Michael!  Leap while you may!” shouted a dozen voices.  Michael turned—­

“And what should I come back for, then, to go home where no one knoweth me?  I’ll die like an Englishman this day, or I’ll know the reason why!” and turning, he sprang in over the bulwarks, as the huge ship rolled up more and more, like a dying whale, exposing all her long black hulk almost down to the keel, and one of her lower-deck guns as if in defiance exploded upright into the air, hurling the ball to the very heavens.

In an instant it was answered from the Rose by a column of smoke, and the eighteen-pound ball crashed through the bottom of the defenseless Spaniard.

“Who fired!  Shame to fire on a sinking ship!”

“Gunner Yeo, sir,” shouted a voice from the maindeck.  “He’s like a madman down here.”

“Tell him if he fires again, I’ll put him in irons, if he were my own brother.  Cut away the grapples aloft, men.  Don’t you see how she drags us over?  Cut away, or we shall sink with her.”

They cut away, and the Rose, released from the strain, shook her feathers on the wave-crest like a freed sea-gull, while all men held their breaths.

Suddenly the glorious creature righted herself, and rose again, as if in noble shame, for one last struggle with her doom.  Her bows were deep in the water, but her after-deck still dry.  Righted:  but only for a moment, long enough to let her crew come pouring wildly up on deck, with cries and prayers, and rush aft to the poop, where, under the flag of Spain, stood the tall captain, his left hand on the standard-staff, his sword pointed in his right.

“Back men!” they heard him cry, “and die like valiant mariners.”

Some of them ran to the bulwarks, and shouted “Mercy!  We surrender!” and the English broke into a cheer and called to them to run her alongside.

“Silence!” shouted Amyas.  “I take no surrender from mutineers.  Senor,” cried he to the captain, springing into the rigging and taking off his hat, “for the love of God and these men, strike! and surrender a buena guerra.”

The Spaniard lifted his hat and bowed courteously, and answered.  “Impossible, Senor.  No guerra is good which stains my honor.”

“God have mercy on you, then!”

“Amen!” said the Spaniard, crossing himself.

She gave one awful lunge forward, and dived under the coming swell, hurling her crew into the eddies.  Nothing but the point of her poop remained, and there stood the stern and steadfast Don, cap-a-pie in his glistening black armor, immovable as a man of iron, while over him the flag, which claimed the empire of both worlds, flaunted its gold aloft and upwards in the glare of the tropic noon.

“He shall not carry that flag to the devil with him; I will have it yet, if I die for it!” said Will Cary, and rushed to the side to leap overboard, but Amyas stopped him.