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Updated: June 22, 2025
If the colonel says 'Charge! we charge; if he says 'Dismount and take to your musketoons! we do so, without troubling our heads as to whether it is Germans or Spaniards or Frenchmen whom we have to aim at. Ah, here come your four men!"
For the next half-hour we were just within extreme range of the carbines and musketoons. During that half-hour we were slowly slipping by the long two miles of Slapton sands. We could not go fast, for our only sail was a coat, and, though the wind was pretty fresh, the set of the tide was against us.
You have your armour and headpieces, your doublets and jackboots, so there is not much to buy. I have horses ready for you. You have pistols." "Yes, we have all pistols and swords, colonel, but the musketoons belonged to the regiment." "There will be no occasion for you to carry them.
The resemblance did not end here; for in this small vaulted apartment, the walls of which were hung round with musketoons, pistols, cutlasses, and other weapons, as well as with many sets of fetters and irons of different construction, all disposed in great order, and ready for employment, a person sat, who might not unaptly be compared to a huge bloated and bottled spider, placed there to secure the prey which had fallen into his toils.
The prisoners were all pinioned, and guarded by four buccaneers with musketoons who manned these boats in addition to the two fellows who were to sail them. Their place was to be in the rear and they were to take no part whatever in the coming fight.
The guards prodded them savagely with the butts of their musketoons, thus making scant room for us to shuffle through, out upon the far end of the wharf, where we were finally halted abreast of a lumping brig, apparently nearly ready for sea.
We had a few pike-men with us, who, springing to the front, knelt down to receive the horses. Those with pistols formed the second rank, while those with arquebuses and musketoons drew up behind them. We thus presented a formidable front, while a deep ditch on either side prevented our being taken in flank. The Spaniards, nothing daunted, however, galloped forward. We received them firmly.
We have, indeed, the advantage of our musketoons; but I observed at Ternate that many of the men have muskets, and the sound of firearms would therefore in no way alarm them.
Then the canister, which produced ghastly murder, chain-shot to bring down masts and spars, langrel to fire at masts and rigging, and the dismantling shot to tear off sails, were all made ready. The muskets for the marines, the musketoons, the pistols, the cutlasses, the boarding-pikes, the axes or tomahawks, the bayonets and sailors' knives, were placed conveniently for use.
The repeated shouts of "Ashton and Bucklaw for ever!" the discharge of pistols, guns, and musketoons, to give what was called the bridal shot, evinced the interest the people took in the occasion of the cavalcade, as they accompanied it upon their return to the castle.
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