The prince, clad in that dark armour which gave him his name, was directing the attack from the poop when the shipman rushed wildly up to him with fear on his face.
“Sire!” he cried. “The ship may not stand against these blows. A few more will sink her! Already the water floods inboard.”
The prince looked up, and as he did so the shaggy beard showed once more, and two brawny arms swept downward. A great slug, whizzing down, beat a gaping hole in the deck, and fell rending and riving into the hold below. The master-mariner tore his grizzled hair.
“Another leak!” he cried. “I pray to Saint Leonard to bear us up this day! Twenty of my shipmen are bailing with buckets, but the water rises on them fast. The vessel may not float another hour.”
The prince had snatched a crossbow from one of his attendants and levelled it at the Spaniard’s tops. At the very instant when the seaman stood erect with a fresh bar in his hands, the bolt took him full in the face, and his body fell forward over the parapet, hanging there head downward. A howl of exultation burst from the English at the sight, answered by a wild roar of anger from the Spaniards. A seaman had run from the Lion’s hold and whispered in the ear of the shipman. He turned an ashen face upon the prince.
“It is even as I say, sire. The ship is sinking beneath our feet!” he cried.
“The more need that we should gain another,” said he. “Sir Henry Stokes, Sir Thomas Stourton, William, John of Clifton, here lies our road! Advance my banner, Thomas de Mohun! On, and the day is ours!”
By a desperate scramble, a dozen men, the prince at their head, gained a footing on the edge of the Spaniard’s deck. Some slashed furiously to clear a space, others hung over, clutching the rail with one hand and pulling up their comrades from below. Every instant that they could hold their own their strength increased, till twenty had become thirty, and thirty forty, when of a sudden the newcomers, still reaching forth to their comrades below, saw the deck beneath them reel and vanish in a swirling sheet of foam. The prince’s ship had foundered.
A yell went up from the Spaniards as they turned furiously upon the small band who had reached their deck. Already the prince and his men had carried the poop, and from that high station they beat back their swarming enemies. But crossbow darts pelted and thudded among their ranks, till a third of their number were stretched upon the planks. Lined across the deck, they could hardly keep an unbroken front to the leaping, surging crowd who pressed upon them. Another rush, or another after that, must assuredly break them, for these dark men of Spain, hardened by an endless struggle with the Moors, were fierce and stubborn fighters. But hark to this sudden roar upon the farther side of them!
“Saint George! Saint George! A Knolles to the rescue!”
A small craft had run alongside, and sixty men had swarmed on the deck of the St. Iago. Caught between two fires, the Spaniards wavered and broke. The fight became a massacre. Down from the poop sprang the Prince’s men. Up from the waist rushed the new-corners. There were five dreadful minutes of blows and screams and prayers, with struggling figures clinging to the bulwarks and sullen splashes into the water below. Then it was over, and a crowd of weary, overstrained men leaned panting upon their weapons, or lay breathless and exhausted upon the deck of the captured carack.
The prince had pulled up his visor and lowered his beaver. He smiled proudly as he gazed around him and wiped his streaming face.
“Where is the shipman?” he asked. “Let him lead us against another ship.”
“Nay, sire; the shipman and all his men have sunk in the Lion,” said Thomas de Mohun, a young knight of the west country, who carried the standard. “We have lost our ship and the half of our following. I fear that we can fight no more.”
“It matters the less since the day is already ours,” said the prince, looking over the sea. “My noble father’s royal banner flies upon yonder Spaniard. Mowbray, Audley, Suffolk, Beauchamp, Namur, Tracey, Stafford, Arundel, each has his flag over a scarlet carack, even as mine floats over this. See, yonder squadron is already far beyond our reach. But surely we owe thanks to you who came at so perilous a moment to our aid. Your face I have seen, and your coat-armour also, young sir, though I cannot lay my tongue to your name. Let me know it, that I may thank you.”
He had turned to Nigel, who stood flushed and joyous at the head of the boarders from the Basilisk.
“I am but a squire, sire, and can claim no thanks, for there is nothing that I have done. Here is our leader.”
The prince’s eyes fell upon the shield charged with the Black Raven and the stern young face of him who bore it.
“Sir Robert Knolles,” said
