Part 30 (2/2)
A great carack was within a bowshot of them and crossing their bows.
Bunce looked up at his mast, and he saw that already it was shaken and drooping. Another blow and it would be over the side and his s.h.i.+p a helpless log upon the water. He jammed his helm round therefore, and ran his s.h.i.+p alongside the Spaniard, throwing out his hooks and iron chains as he did so.
They, no less eager, grappled the Philippa both fore and aft, and the two vessels, linked tightly together, surged slowly over the long blue rollers. Over their bulwarks hung a cloud of men locked together in a desperate struggle, sometimes surging forward on to the deck of the Spaniard, sometimes recoiling back on to the King's s.h.i.+p, reeling this way and that, with the swords flickering like silver flames above them, while the long-drawn cry of rage and agony swelled up like a wolf's howl to the calm blue heaven above them.
But now s.h.i.+p after s.h.i.+p of the English had come up, each throwing its iron over the nearest Spaniard and striving to board her high red sides.
Twenty s.h.i.+ps were drifting in furious single combat after the manner of the Philippa, until the whole surface of the sea was covered with a succession of these desperate duels. The dismasted carack, which the King's s.h.i.+p had left behind it, had been carried by the Earl of Suffolk's Christopher, and the water was dotted with the heads of her crew. An English s.h.i.+p had been sunk by a huge stone discharged from an engine, and her men also were struggling in the waves, none having leisure to lend them a hand. A second English s.h.i.+p was caught between two of the Spanish vessels and overwhelmed by a rush of boarders so that not a man of her was left alive. On the other hand, Mowbray and Audley had each taken the caracks which were opposed to them, and the battle in the center, after swaying this way and that, was turning now in favor of the Islanders.
The Black Prince, with the Lion, the Grace Marie and four other s.h.i.+ps had swept round to turn the Spanish flank; but the movement was seen, and the Spaniards had ten s.h.i.+ps with which to meet it, one of them their great carack the St. Iago di Compostella. To this s.h.i.+p the Prince had attached his little cog and strove desperately to board her, but her side was so high and the defense so desperate that his men could never get beyond her bulwarks but were hurled down again and again with a clang and clash to the deck beneath. Her side bristled with crossbowmen, who shot straight down on to the packed waist of the Lion, so that the dead lay there in heaps. But the most dangerous of all was a swarthy black-bearded giant in the tops, who crouched so that none could see him, but rising every now and then with a huge lump of iron between his hands, hurled it down with such force that nothing would stop it. Again and again these ponderous bolts crashed through the deck and hurtled down into the bottom of the s.h.i.+p, starting the planks and shattering all that came in their way.
The Prince, clad in that dark armor which gave him his name, was directing the attack from the p.o.o.p when the s.h.i.+pman rushed wildly up to him with fear on his face.
”Sire!” he cried. ”The s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.a.ggy 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 s.h.i.+pmen are bailing with buckets, but the water rises on them fast. The vessel may not float another hour.”
The Prince had s.n.a.t.c.hed a crossbow from one of his attendants and leveled 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 s.h.i.+pman. He turned an ashen face upon the Prince.
”It is even as I say, sire. The s.h.i.+p 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 s.h.i.+p 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 p.o.o.p, 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 a.s.suredly 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 ma.s.sacre. Down from the p.o.o.p 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 s.h.i.+pman?” he asked. ”Let him lead us against another s.h.i.+p.”
”Nay, sire, the s.h.i.+pman 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 s.h.i.+p 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 n.o.ble 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-armor also, young sir, though I cannot lay my tongue to your name. Let me know 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 s.h.i.+eld charged with the Black Raven and the stern young face of him who bore it. ”Sir Robert Knolles,” said he, ”I had thought you were on your way to Brittany.”
”I was so, sire, when I had the fortune to see this battle as I pa.s.sed.”
The Prince laughed. ”It would indeed be to ask too much, Robert, that you should keep on your course when much honor was to be gathered so close to you. But now I pray you that you will come back with us to Winchelsea, for well I know that my father would fain thank you for what you have done this day.”
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