“VHY do you vait, my friend?” growled van der Kuylen.
“Aye--in God's name!” snapped Willoughby.
It was the afternoon of that same day, and the two buccaneer ships
rocked gently with idly flapping sails under the lee of the long spit
of land forming the great natural harbour of Port Royal, and less than a
mile from the straits leading into it, which the fort commanded. It was
two hours and more since they had brought up thereabouts, having crept
thither unobserved by the city and by M. de Rivarol's ships, and all the
time the air had been aquiver with the roar of guns from sea and land,
announcing that battle was joined between the French and the defenders
of Port Royal. That long, inactive waiting was straining the nerves of
both Lord Willoughby and van der Kuylen.
“You said you vould show us zome vine dings. Vhere are dese vine dings?”
Blood faced them, smiling confidently. He was arrayed for battle, in
back-and-breast of black steel. “I'll not be trying your patience much
longer. Indeed, I notice already a slackening in the fire. But it's this
way, now: there's nothing at all to be gained by precipitancy, and a
deal to be gained by delaying, as I shall show you, I hope.”
Lord Willoughby eyed him suspiciously. “Ye think that in the meantime
Bishop may come back or Admiral van der Kuylen's fleet appear?”
“Sure, now, I'm thinking nothing of the kind. What I'm thinking is that
in this engagement with the fort M. de Rivarol, who's a lubberly fellow,
as I've reason to know, will be taking some damage that may make the
odds a trifle more even. Sure, it'll be time enough to go forward when
the fort has shot its bolt.”
“Aye, aye!” The sharp approval came like a cough from the little
Governor-General. “I perceive your object, and I believe ye're entirely
right. Ye have the qualities of a great commander, Captain Blood. I beg
your pardon for having misunderstood you.”
“And that's very handsome of your lordship. Ye see, I have some
experience of this kind of action, and whilst I'll take any risk that
I must, I'll take none that I needn't. But....” He broke off to
listen. “Aye, I was right. The fire's slackening. It'll mean the end of
Mallard's resistance in the fort. Ho there, Jeremy!”
He leaned on the carved rail and issued orders crisply. The bo'sun's
pipe shrilled out, and in a moment the ship that had seemed to slumber
there, awoke to life. Came the padding of feet along the decks, the
creaking of blocks and the hoisting of sail. The helm was put over
hard, and in a moment they were moving, the Elizabeth following, ever in
obedience to the signals from the Arabella, whilst Ogle the gunner,
whom he had summoned, was receiving Blood's final instructions before
plunging down to his station on the main deck.
Within a quarter of an hour they had rounded the head, and stood in to
the harbour mouth, within saker shot of Rivarol's three ships, to which
they now abruptly disclosed themselves.
Where the fort had stood they now beheld a smoking rubbish heap, and the
victorious Frenchman with the lily standard trailing from his mastheads
was sweeping forward to snatch the rich prize whose defences he had
shattered.
Blood scanned the French ships, and chuckled. The Victorieuse and the
Medusa appeared to have taken no more than a few scars; but the third
ship, the Baleine, listing heavily to larboard so as to keep the great
gash in her starboard well above water, was out of account.
“You see!” he cried to van der Kuylen, and without waiting for the
Dutchman's approving grunt, he shouted an order: “Helm, hard-a-port!”
The sight of that great red ship with her gilt beak-head and open
ports swinging broadside on must have given check to Rivarol's soaring
exultation. Yet before he could move to give an order, before he could
well resolve what order to give, a volcano of fire and metal burst
upon him from the buccaneers, and his decks were swept by the murderous
scythe of the broadside. The Arabella held to her course, giving place
to the Elizabeth, which, following closely, executed the same manoeuver.
And then whilst still the Frenchmen were confused, panic-stricken by
an attack that took them so utterly by surprise, the Arabella had gone
about, and was returning in her tracks, presenting now her larboard
guns, and loosing her second broadside in the wake of the first.
Came yet another broadside from the Elizabeth and then the Arabella's
trumpeter sent a call across the water, which Hagthorpe perfectly
understood.
“On, now, Jeremy!” cried Blood. “Straight into them before they recover
their wits. Stand by, there! Prepare to board! Hayton ... the grapnels!
And pass the word to the gunner in the prow to fire as fast as he can
load.”
He discarded his feathered hat, and covered himself with a steel
head-piece, which a negro lad brought him. He meant to lead this
boarding-party in person. Briskly he explained himself to his
two guests. “Boarding is our only chance here. We are too heavily
outgunned.”
Of this the fullest demonstration followed quickly. The Frenchmen
having recovered their wits at last, both ships swung broadside on, and
concentrating upon the Arabella as the nearer and heavier and therefore
more immediately dangerous of their two opponents, volleyed upon her
jointly at almost the same moment.
Unlike the buccaneers, who had fired high to cripple their enemies above
decks, the French fifed low to smash the hull of their assailant. The
Arabella rocked and staggered under that terrific hammering, although
Pitt kept her headed towards the French so that she should offer the
narrowest target. For a moment she seemed to hesitate, then she plunged
forward again, her beak-head in splinters, her forecastle smashed, and a
gaping hole forward, that was only just above the water-line. Indeed,
to make her safe from bilging, Blood ordered a prompt jettisoning of the
forward guns, anchors, and water-casks and whatever else was moveable.
Meanwhile, the Frenchmen going about, gave the like reception to the
Elizabeth. The Arabella, indifferently served by the wind, pressed
forward to come to grips. But before she could accomplish her object,
the Victorieuse had loaded her starboard guns again, and pounded her
advancing enemy with a second broadside at close quarters. Amid the
thunder of cannon, the rending of timbers, and the screams of maimed
men, the half-necked Arabella plunged and reeled into the cloud of smoke
that concealed her prey, and then from Hayton went up the cry that she
was going down by the head.
Blood's heart stood still. And then in that very moment of his despair,
the blue and gold flank of the Victorieuse loomed through the smoke.
But even as he caught that enheartening glimpse he perceived, too, how
sluggish now was their advance, and how with every second it grew more
sluggish. They must sink before they reached her.
Thus, with an oath, opined the Dutch Admiral, and from Lord Willoughby
there was a word of blame for Blood's seamanship in having risked all
upon this gambler's throw of boarding.
“There was no other chance!” cried Blood, in broken-hearted frenzy. “If
ye say it was desperate and foolhardy, why, so it was; but the occasion
and the means demanded nothing less. I fail within an ace of victory.”
But they had not yet completely failed. Hayton himself, and a score of
sturdy rogues whom his whistle had summoned, were crouching for shelter
amid the wreckage of the forecastle with grapnels ready. Within seven or
eight yards of the Victorieuse, when their way seemed spent, and their
forward deck already awash under the eyes of the jeering, cheering
Frenchmen, those men leapt up and forward, and hurled their grapnels
across the chasm. Of the four they flung, two reached the Frenchman's
decks, and fastened there. Swift as thought itself, was then the action
of those sturdy, experienced buccaneers. Unhesitatingly all threw
themselves upon the chain of one of those grapnels, neglecting the
other, and heaved upon it with all their might to warp the ships
together. Blood, watching from his own quarter-deck, sent out his voice
in a clarion call:
“Musketeers to the prow!”
The musketeers, at their station at the waist, obeyed him with the speed
of men who know that in obedience is the only hope of life. Fifty of
them dashed forward instantly, and from the ruins of the forecastle they
blazed over the heads of Hayton's men, mowing down the French soldiers
who, unable to dislodge the irons, firmly held where they had deeply
bitten into the timbers of the Victorieuse, were themselves preparing to
fire upon the grapnel crew.
Starboard to starboard the two ships swung against each other with a
jarring thud. By then Blood was down in the waist, judging and acting
with the hurricane speed the occasion demanded. Sail had been lowered
by slashing away the ropes that held the yards. The advance guard of
boarders, a hundred strong, was ordered to the poop, and his grapnel-men
were posted, and prompt to obey his command at the very moment of
impact. As a result, the foundering Arabella was literally kept afloat
by the half-dozen grapnels that in an instant moored her firmly to the
Victorieuse.
Willoughby and van der Kuylen on the poop had watched in breathless
amazement the speed and precision with which Blood and his desperate
crew had gone to work. And now he came racing up, his bugler sounding
the charge, the main host of the buccaneers following him, whilst the
vanguard, led by the gunner Ogle, who had been driven from his guns by
water in the gun-deck, leapt shouting to the prow of the Victorieuse, to
whose level the high poop of the water-logged Arabella had sunk. Led now
by Blood himself, they launched themselves upon the French like hounds
upon the stag they have brought to bay. After them went others, until
all had gone, and none but Willoughby and the Dutchman were left to
watch the fight from the quarter-deck of the abandoned Arabella.
For fully half-an-hour that battle raged aboard the Frenchman. Beginning
in the prow, it surged through the forecastle to the waist, where it
reached a climax of fury. The French resisted stubbornly, and they had
the advantage of numbers to encourage them. But for all their stubborn
valour, they ended by being pressed back and back across the decks that
were dangerously canted to starboard by the pull of the water-logged
Arabella. The buccaneers fought with the desperate fury of men who know
that retreat is impossible, for there was no ship to which they could
retreat, and here they must prevail and make the Victorieuse their own,
or perish.
And their own they made her in the end, and at a cost of nearly half
their numbers. Driven to the quarter-deck, the surviving defenders,
urged on by the infuriated Rivarol, maintained awhile their desperate
resistance. But in the end, Rivarol went down with a bullet in his head,
and the French remnant, numbering scarcely a score of whole men, called
for quarter.
Even then the labours of Blood's men were not at an end. The Elizabeth
and the Medusa were tight-locked, and Hagthorpe's followers were being
driven back aboard their own ship for the second time. Prompt measures
were demanded. Whilst Pitt and his seamen bore their part with the
sails, and Ogle went below with a gun-crew, Blood ordered the grapnels
to be loosed at once. Lord Willoughby and the Admiral were already
aboard the Victorieuse. As they swung off to the rescue of Hagthorpe,
Blood, from the quarter-deck of the conquered vessel, looked his last
upon the ship that had served him so well, the ship that had become to
him almost as a part of himself. A moment she rocked after her release,
then slowly and gradually settled down, the water gurgling and eddying
about her topmasts, all that remained visible to mark the spot where she
had met her death.
As he stood there, above the ghastly shambles in the waist of the
Victorieuse, some one spoke behind him. “I think, Captain Blood, that it
is necessary I should beg your pardon for the second time. Never before
have I seen the impossible made possible by resource and valour, or
victory so gallantly snatched from defeat.”
He turned, and presented to Lord Willoughby a formidable front. His
head-piece was gone, his breastplate dinted, his right sleeve a rag
hanging from his shoulder about a naked arm. He was splashed from head
to foot with blood, and there was blood from a scalp-wound that he had
taken matting his hair and mixing with the grime of powder on his face
to render him unrecognizable.
But from that horrible mask two vivid eyes looked out preternaturally
bright, and from those eyes two tears had ploughed each a furrow through
the filth of his cheeks.