The soldiers were armed and ready in the waist and on the forecastle. There were gunners, grimed and stained with sweat, standing by their culverins; the brief panic had been swiftly quelled. Let the Venture come!
She was near, standing the fire from the long basiliscos; she drew nearer, and through the smoke one might see the men on her with boarding axes and swords, ready for the order to board the Spaniard. Then, suddenly, there was a crack and a roar, the bursting flame and the black smoke of a score of swivel-guns on her decks, all trained upon the waist of the Santa Maria. There was havoc wrought amongst the Spanish soldiery; cries, groans, and oaths rent the air, and swiftly, while havoc lasted, the Venture crept up, and grappled the tall galleon.
Men swarmed up the sides, using their boarding axes to form scaling ladders. From the spritsail yard they sprang down upon the deck of the Santa Maria, daggers between their teeth, and long swords in hand. No might of Spanish soldiery, maimed as it was by the wicked fire, could stop them. They came on, and the fight was desperate over the slippery decks: sword to sword, slash and cut, and the quick stab of daggers.
Don Juan stood at the head of the companion, sword in hand, a tall figure in breastplate and tassets of fluted steel. He sought in the press for a leader amongst the boarders, but could see none in that hurly-burly.
It was hard fighting, frenzied fighting, over wounded and dead, with ever and again the crack of a dag fired at close range. The pandemonium was intense; no single voice could be distinguished amongst the hubbub of groans, shouted orders, sharp cries, and clash of arms. One could not tell for a while who had the advantage: the fight swayed and eddied, and the Santa Maria lay helpless under all.
A man seemed to spring up out of the mob below, and gained the companion. A moment he stood with his foot upon the first step, looking up at Don Juan, a red sword in his hand, a cloak twisted about his left arm, and a black pointed beard upthrust. A chased morion shaded the upper part of his face, but Don Juan saw white teeth agleam, and crouched for the stroke that should send this stranger to perdition. “Down, perro!” he snarled.
The stranger laughed, and answered him in pure Castilian. “Nay, señor, the dog comes up.”
Don Juan peered to see more closely into the upturned face. “Come up and die, dog,” he said softly, “for I think you are he whom I seek.”
“All Spain seems to seek me, señor,” answered the stranger merrily. “But who shall slay Nick Beauvallet? Will you try?”
He came up the first steps in a bound, and his sword took Don Juan’s in a strong parry that beat it aside for a moment. He brought his cloak swirling into swift play, and entangled Don Juan’s sword in it. He was up on the quarterdeck in a flash, even as Don Juan, livid, shook his sword free of the cloak. The two blades rang together, but Don Juan knew that he had met his master. He was forced back and back across the deck to the bulwarks, fighting grimly every inch of the way.
Cruzada, his lieutenant, came running from the poop-deck. Beauvallet saw, and made a quick end. His great sword whirled aloft, cleaved downwards, hissing through the air, and shattered the pauldron over Don Juan’s shoulder. Don Juan sank, half-stunned, to his knees, and his sword clattered to the deck. Beauvallet turned, panting, to meet Cruzada.
But there were Englishmen on the quarterdeck now, hard upon the heels of their leader, and from all sides came cries from the Spaniards for quarter. Beauvallet’s sword held Cruzada in check. “Yield, señor, yield,” he said. “I hold your general prisoner.”
“But yet I may slay you, pirate!” gasped Cruzada.
“Curb ambition, child,” Beauvallet said. “Here Daw, Russet, Curlew! Overpower me this springald. Softly, lads, softly!”
Cruzada found himself surrounded, and cried out in fury. Rough hands seized him from behind, and dragged him back; he saw Beauvallet leaning on his sword, and cursed him wildly for a coward and a poltroon.
Beauvallet chuckled at that. “Grow a beard, child, and meet me when it’s grown. Mr. Dangerfield!” His lieutenant was at hand. “Have a guard about the worthy señor,” said Beauvallet, and indicated Don Juan by a brief nod. He bent, picked up Don Juan’s sword, and was off, light-footed, down the companion into the waist of the ship.
Don Juan recovered his senses to find himself unarmed, and El Beauvallet gone. He came staggering to his feet, an English hand at his elbow, and was aware of a fair boy confronting him. “You are my prisoner, señor,” said Richard Dangerfield, in halting Spanish. “The day is lost.”
The sweat was in Don Juan’s eyes; he brushed it away, and could see the truth of this statement. All over the galleon his men were laying down their arms. The rage and the anguish that convulsed him were wiped suddenly from his face. By a supreme effort he recovered his sosiego, and stood straight and looked impassively as should befit his breeding. He achieved a bow. “I am in your hands, señor.”
Over the quarterdeck towards the poop men were hurrying already in search of plunder. Some three or four stout fellows went clattering down the companion that led to the staterooms. They came upon a sight to astonish them. Backed against the wall, with hands laid along the panelling to either side of her stood a lady, a lady all cream and rose and ebony. Cream her skin, and rose her lips, ebony the lustrous hair confined under a net of gold. Her eyes were dark and
