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The general concerted a plan with the captains and pilots, and ordered the flag-ship, the San Pelayo, and a chaloupe to attack the French flag-ship, the Trinity, while the first galley and another chaloupe would attack the French galley, both of which vessels were very large and powerful.
"Whenever," says the Bishop Alvaro Pelayo, "I entered the apartments of the Roman court clergy, I found them occupied in counting up the gold-coin, which lay about the rooms in heaps." Every opportunity of extending the jurisdiction of the Curia was welcome. Exemptions were so managed that fresh grants were constantly necessary.
On this same day, Pelayo was out with his huntsmen among the mountains, and had taken his stand on a rock, at a narrow pass, to await the sallying forth of a wild boar. Close by him was a page, conducting a horse, and at the saddle-bow hung his armor, for he was always prepared for fight among these border mountains. While thus posted, the servant of the merchant came flying from the robbers.
However, Pelayo and his men fortified themselves by degrees in the passes of the mountain until the Moslems were made acquainted with their preparations; but, perceiving how few they were, they heeded not the advice given to them, but allowed them to gather strength, saying, ’What are thirty barbarians perched upon a rock? They must inevitably die.’"
For a number of years this small band of fugitive Christians, gathered between the mountains and the sea in northwestern Spain, remained quiet, desiring only to be overlooked or disregarded by the conquerors. But in the year 717 a leader came to them, and Spain once more lifted her head in defiance of her invaders. Pelayo, the leader named, is a hero shrouded in mist.
The PELAYO and the PRINCE CONQUISTADOR were the only ships that were for fighting. As soon as the action was discontinued, Nelson went on board the admiral's ship. Sir John Jervis received him on the quarter-deck, took him in his arms, and said he could not sufficiently thank him. For this victory the commander-in-chief was rewarded with the title of Earl St. Vincent.
In the morning Menendez gave over the chase, turned, and, with the "San Pelayo" alone, ran back for the St. John's. But here a welcome was prepared for him. He saw bands of armed men drawn up on the beach, and the smaller vessels of Ribaut's squadron, which had crossed the bar several days before, anchored behind it to oppose his landing.
On the tenth, they anchored in the harbor of Porto Rico, where they found two ships of their squadron, from which they had parted in the storm. One of them was the "San Pelayo," with Menendez on board.
Against five new American battleships, the Iowa, Indiana, Massachusetts, Oregon and Texas, the first four of 10,000 tons, and the armored cruisers Brooklyn and New York of 9000 and 8000 tans, Spain could oppose the battleship Pelayo, a little better than the Texas and five armored cruisers, the Carlos V, Infanta Maria Teresa, Almirante Oquendo, and Vizcaya, each of about 7000 tons, and the somewhat larger and very able former Italian cruiser Cristobal Colon.
But when in the evening I meet him haggard and feverish, hawking his unsold places in desperate panic on the sidewalk, I cannot but remember that probably a half dozen dirty and tawny descendants of Pelayo will eat no beans to-morrow for those unfortunate tickets, and my wrath melts, and I buy his crumpled papers, moist with the sweat of anxiety, and add a slight propina, which I fear will be spent in aguardiente to calm his shattered nerves.
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