Stolen Treasure | Page 8

was blowing up the harbor, whereupon the carpenter,
at Captain Morgan's orders, having cut away both anchors, the galleon
presently bore away up the harbor, gathering headway every moment
with the wind nearly dead astern. The nearest vessel was the only one
that for the moment was able to offer any hinderance. This ship, having
by this time cleared away one of its guns, was able to fire a parting shot
against the vice-admiral, striking her somewhere forward, as our hero
could see by a great shower of splinters that flew up in the moonlight.
At the sound of the shot all the vessels of the flota not yet disturbed by
the alarm were aroused at once, so that the pirates had the satisfaction
of knowing that they would have to run the gantlet of all the ships
between them and the open sea before they could reckon themselves
escaped.
And, indeed, to our hero's mind it seemed that the battle which
followed must have been the most terrific cannonade that was ever
heard in the world. It was not so ill at first, for it was some while before

the Spaniards could get their guns clear for action, they being not the
least in the world prepared for such an occasion as this. But by-and-by
first one and then another ship opened fire upon the galleon, until it
seemed to our hero that all the thunders of heaven let loose upon them
could not have created a more prodigious uproar, and that it was not
possible that they could any of them escape destruction.
By now the moon had risen full and round, so that the clouds of smoke
that rose in the air appeared as white as snow. The air seemed full of
the hiss and screaming of shot, each one of which, when it struck the
galleon, was magnified by our hero's imagination into ten times its
magnitude from the crash which it delivered and from the cloud of
splinters it would cast up into the moonlight. At last he suddenly beheld
one poor man knocked sprawling across the deck, who, as he raised his
arm from behind the mast, disclosed that the hand was gone from it,
and that the shirt-sleeve was red with blood in the moonlight. At this
sight all the strength fell away from poor Harry, and he felt sure that a
like fate or even a worse must be in store for him.
But, after all, this was nothing to what it might have been in broad
daylight, for what with the darkness of night, and the little preparation
the Spaniards could make for such a business, and the extreme haste
with which they discharged their guns (many not understanding what
was the occasion of all this uproar), nearly all the shot flew so wide of
the mark that not above one in twenty struck that at which it was
aimed.
Meantime Captain Morgan, with the Sieur Simon, who had followed
him upon deck, stood just above where our hero lay behind the shelter
of the bulwark. The captain had lit a pipe of tobacco, and he stood now
in the bright moonlight close to the rail, with his hands behind him,
looking out ahead with the utmost coolness imaginable, and paying no
more attention to the din of battle than though it were twenty leagues
away. Now and then he would take his pipe from his lips to utter an
order to the man at the wheel. Excepting this he stood there hardly
moving at all, the wind blowing his long red hair over his shoulders.
Had it not been for the armed galley the pirates might have got the

galleon away with no great harm done in spite of all this cannonading,
for the man-of-war which rode at anchor nighest to them at the mouth
of the harbor was still so far away that they might have passed it by
hugging pretty close to the shore, and that without any great harm
being done to them in the darkness. But just at this moment, when the
open water lay in sight, came this galley pulling out from behind the
point of the shore in such a manner as either to head our pirates off
entirely or else to compel them to approach so near to the man-of-war
that that latter vessel could bring its guns to bear with more effect.
This galley, I must tell you, was like others of its kind such as you may
find in these waters, the hull being long and cut low to the water so as
to allow the oars to dip freely. The bow was sharp and projected far out
ahead, mounting a swivel upon it, while at the stern a number of
galleries built