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Updated: July 15, 2025
I exceeded my intentions in that I carried off two prisoners instead of one. These prisoners," he ran on, judging that the moment of reaction in Asad's mind was entirely favourable to the preferment of the request he had to make, "are not in the bagnio with the others. They are still confined aboard the carack I seized." "And why is this?" quoth Asad, but without suspicion now.
Had he not been in the Barbados in such a year, and had he not there captured the galleon Maria de las Dolores? What was that but an act of villainous piracy? Had he not scuttled a Spanish carack four years ago in the bay of Funchal? Had he not been with that pirate Hawkins in the affair at San Juan de Ulloa? And so on. Questions poured upon him and engulfed him.
And then, as if he had been sustained by no more than the very force of his will, he sank down in a heap among the dead and wounded huddled against the vessel's bulwarks. Grief-stricken his corsairs bore him back aboard the carack. Were he to die then was their victory a barren one indeed.
A dozen men in the tops of the carack were balancing a huge stone with the intention of dropping it over on the English deck. With a scream of horror they saw the mast cracking beneath them. Over it went, slowly at first, then faster, until with a crash it came down on its side, sending them flying like stones from a sling far out into the sea.
The Dutchman, Othmani informed him, was following in their wake, with Ali and some others aboard her, steering ever in the wake of the carack which continued to be navigated by the Nasrani dog, Jasper Leigh.
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.
Nuala signaled the other carack to bear down with her, and presently they made out that it was a large sailing galley, which headed straight for them. "That is none of my ships," exclaimed Nuala, watching. "It seems strange that she does not flee before us, Brian. She bears no ensign, yet she must be from these parts, and would naturally have some fear of pirates."
He made his preparations quickly, and on the morrow the Spanish carack lately labelled Nuestra Senora de las Llagas, but with that label carefully effaced from her quarter trimmed her sails and stood out for the open Atlantic, navigated by Captain Jasper Leigh.
And withall this ship was nothing at all pestered neither within boord nor without, and was more like a ship of warre then otherwise: moreouer she had the ordinance of a Carak that was cast away at Moçambique, and the company of her, together with the company of another Carack that was cast away a little to the Eastwards of the Cape of Buona Speranza.
Five such ships would be required, as any reader of Hakluyt must know, to take a single Carack; and it would be no use running the risk of hanging for any less prize. The Spanish main was warned and armed, and the Western Isles also. Is it possible that these two men would have been insane enough in such circumstances to go without Raleigh, if they could have gone with him?
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