our arrow!
shoot wholly together!" from the master-bowman.
and now both mangonels were at work from the galleys, but so
covered and protected that, save at the moment of discharge, no
glimpse could be caught of them. a huge brown rock from the
genoese sang over their heads, and plunged sullenly into the
slope of a wave. another from the norman whizzed into the waist,
broke the back of a horse, and crashed its way through the side
of the vessel. two others, flying together, tore a great gap in
the st. christopher upon the sail, and brushed three of sir
oliver's men-at-arms from the forecastle. the master-shipman
looked at the knight with a troubled face.
"they keep their distance from us," said he. "our archery is
over-good, and they will not close. what defence can we make
against the stones?"
"i think i may trick them," the knight answered cheerfully, and
passed his order to the archers. instantly five of them threw up
their hands and fell prostrate upon the deck. one had already
been slain by a bolt, so that there were but four upon their
feet.
"that should give them heart," said sir nigel, eyeing the
galleys, which crept along on either side, with a slow, measured
swing of their great oars, the water swirling and foaming under
their sharp stems.
"they still hold aloof," cried hawtayne.
"then down with two more," shouted their leader. "that will do.
ma foi! but they come to our lure like chicks to the fowler. to
your arms, men! the pennon behind me, and the squires round the
pennon. stand fast with the anchors in the waist, and be ready
for a cast. now blow out the trumpets, and may god's benison be
with the honest men!"
as he spoke a roar of voices and a roll of drums came from either
galley, and the water was lashed into spray by the hurried beat
of a hundred oars. down they swooped, one on the right, one on
the left, the sides and shrouds black with men and bristling with
weapons. in heavy clusters they hung upon the forecastle all
ready for a spring-faces white, faces brown, faces yellow, and
faces black, fair norsemen, swarthy italians, fierce rovers from
the levant, and fiery moors from the barbary states, of all hues
and countries, and marked solely by the common stamp of a wild-
beast ferocity. rasping up on either side, with oars trailing to
save them from snapping, they poured in a living torrent with
horrid yell and shrill whoop upon the defenceless merchantman.
but wilder yet was the cry, and shriller still the scream, when
there rose up from the shadow of those silent bulwarks the long
lines of the english bowmen, and the arrows whizzed in a deadly
sleet among the unprepared masses upon the pirate decks. from
the higher sides of the cog the bowmen could shoot straight down,
at a range which was so short as to enable a cloth-yard shaft to
pierce through mail-coats or to transfix a shield, though it were
an inch thick of toughened wood. one moment alleyne saw the
galley's poop crowded with rushing figures, waving arms, exultant
faces; the next it was a blood-smeared shambles, with bodies
piled three deep upon each other, the living cowering behind the
dead to shelter themselves from that sudden storm-blast of
death. on either side the seamen whom sir nigel had chosen for
the purpose had cast their anchors over the side of the galleys,
so that the three vessels, locked in an iron grip, lurched
heavily forward upon the swell.
and now set in a fell and fierce fight, one of a thousand of
which no chronicler has spoken and no poet sung. through all the
centuries and over all those southern waters nameless men have
fought in nameless places, their sole monuments a protected coast
and an unravaged country-side.
fore and aft the archers had cleared the galleys' decks, but from
either side the rovers had poured down into the waist, where the
seamen and bowmen were pushed back and so mingled with their foes
that it was impossible for their comrades above to draw string to
help them. it was a wild chaos where axe and sword rose and
fell, while englishman, norman, and italian staggered and reeled
on a deck which was cumbered with bodies and slippery with blood.
the clang of blows, the cries of the stricken, the short, deep
shout of the islanders, and the fierce whoops of the rovers, rose
together in a deafening tumult, while the breath of the panting
men went up in the wintry air like the smoke from a furnace. the
giant tete-noire, towering above his fellows and clad from head
to foot in plate of proof, led on his boarders, waving a huge
mace in the air, with which he struck to the deck every man who
approached him. on the other side, spade-beard, a dwarf in
height, but of great breadth of shoulder and length of arm, had
cut a road almost to the mast, with three-score genoese men-at-
arms close
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