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A tall figure completely encased in armour sprang up on the Spanish ship's poop rail and, shaking his naked sword at Marshall, shouted in Spanish: "You are a coward, senor Englishman! Why do you not fight fair, broadside to broadside, instead of sheltering yourself under my stern, where my shot cannot reach you?"
Presently they struck again. Crash! Every timber groaned as the boat turned broadside to the sea, which made a clear breach over her. The coxswain and Bax alone stood up, both holding on to the mizzen-mast. The rest clung on as they best could to the thwarts, sometimes buried in water, often with only their heads above it.
The darkness of night had come on when we got up alongside the enemy. Our captain hailed and asked her name. The answer was "The Spanish frigate Ceres." "Then strike your colours," cried our captain. The enemy did not obey the order, and we immediately poured a broadside into her. The Spaniards returned it, doing us little damage.
The Speaker and the Fairfax followed our example, as did the other ships, receiving in return the broadside of the entire Dutch fleet.
The unfortunate Guerrier was also worthy of her title, for she bore the brunt of the battle. Every ship that passed her appeared to deem it a duty to give her a broadside before settling down to its particular place in the line, and finding its own special antagonist or antagonists for several of the English ships engaged two of the enemy at once.
Then, as the bushes directly ahead caught his eye, he threw up his arms and seized them. The next instant the canoe was whisked from under him, leaving him clinging to the frail support, shrieking with terror and bobbing up and down on the waves. He remained in this position only a few seconds. Clay's canoe struck him obliquely, and the concussion caused it to swing broadside and upset.
The ship now lying down completely on her larboard broadside, suddenly the heads of most of the men disappeared, they having dropped back into the ship, many of those who were holding on being hauled down by others below them. It was, you see, as if they had been trying to get out of a number of chimneys, with nothing for their feet to rest upon.
Christy had evidently inherited some of the naval blood on his mother's side, and he was not satisfied with the slow progress of the action, for the shots from the broadside guns of the enemy were beginning to tell upon the Bronx, though she had received no serious injury. He caused the signal to prepare to board to be set as agreed upon with Captain Flint.
He will seem not even to suppose that the proud Madame de Rochefide could betray him; she could never be guilty of such depravity as loving a man for the sake of his beauty. He will represent you to her as a child ambitious to have a marquise in love with him, and to make himself the arbiter of the fate of two women. In short, he will fire a broadside of malicious insinuations.
But before we had time to rejoice at the success of our comrades, or to hope that their shots had brought down enough of the French ship's spars to disable her, the vessel shook again under a terrific discharge of her ordnance, and we, knowing how vastly superior was her armament to that of our own ship, were in no little anxiety as to the effect of this second broadside at shorter range.
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