“A dozen gold nobles to him who brings down the steersman!” shouted Cary, who had his cue.

And a flight of arrows from the forecastle rattled upon the galley’s quarter-deck.

Hit or not hit, the steersman lost his nerve, and shrank from the coming shock.  The galley’s helm went up to port, and her beak slid all but harmless along Amyas’s bow; a long dull grind, and then loud crack on crack, as the Rose sawed slowly through the bank of oars from stem to stern, hurling the wretched slaves in heaps upon each other; and ere her mate on the other side could swing round to strike him in his new position, Amyas’s whole broadside, great and small, had been poured into her at pistol-shot, answered by a yell which rent their ears and hearts.

“Spare the slaves!  Fire at the soldiers!” cried Amyas; but the work was too hot for much discrimination; for the larboard galley, crippled but not undaunted, swung round across his stern, and hooked herself venomously on to him.

It was a move more brave than wise; for it prevented the other galley from returning to the attack without exposing herself a second time to the English broadside; and a desperate attempt of the Spaniards to board at once through the stern-ports and up the quarter was met with such a demurrer of shot and steel that they found themselves in three minutes again upon the galley’s poop, accompanied, to their intense disgust, by Amyas Leigh and twenty English swords.

Five minutes’ hard cutting, hand to hand, and the poop was clear.  The soldiers in the forecastle had been able to give them no assistance, open as they lay to the arrows and musketry from the Rose’s lofty stern.  Amyas rushed along the central gangway, shouting in Spanish, “Freedom to the slaves! death to the masters!” clambered into the forecastle, followed close by his swarm of wasps, and set them so good an example how to use their stings that in three minutes more there was not a Spaniard on board who was not dead or dying.

“Let the slaves free!” shouted he.  “Throw us a hammer down, men.  Hark! there’s an English voice!”

There is indeed.  From amid the wreck of broken oars and writhing limbs, a voice is shrieking in broadest Devon to the master, who is looking over the side.

“Oh, Robert Drew!  Robert Drew!  Come down, and take me out of hell!”

“Who be you, in the name of the Lord?”

“Don’t you mind William Prust, that Captain Hawkins left behind in the Honduras, years and years agone?  There’s nine of us aboard, if your shot hasn’t put ’em out of their misery.  Come down, if you’ve a Christian heart, come down!”

Utterly forgetful of all discipline, Drew leaps down hammer in hand, and the two old comrades rush into each other’s arms.