Why make a long story of what took but five minutes to do? The nine men (luckily none of them wounded) are freed, and helped on board, to be hugged and kissed by old comrades and young kinsmen;while the remaining slaves, furnished with a couple of hammers, are told to free themselves and help the English.The wretches answer by a shout; and Amyas, once more safe on board again, dashes after the other galley, which has been hovering out of reach of his guns:
but there is no need to trouble himself about her; sickened with what she has got, she is struggling right up wind, leaning over to one side, and seemingly ready to sink.
"Are there any English on board of her?" asks Amyas, loath to lose the chance of freeing a countryman.
"Never a one, sir, thank God."
So they set to work to repair damages; while the liberated slaves, having shifted some of the galley's oars, pull away after their comrade; and that with such a will, that in ten minutes they have caught her up, and careless of the Spaniard's fire, boarded her en masse, with yells as of a thousand wolves.There will be fearful vengeance taken on those tyrants, unless they play the man this day.
And in the meanwhile half the crew are clothing, feeding, questioning, caressing those nine poor fellows thus snatched from living death; and Yeo, hearing the news, has rushed up on deck to welcome his old comrades, and--"Is Michael Heard, my cousin, here among you?"Yes, Michael Heard is there, white-headed rather from misery than age; and the embracings and questionings begin afresh.
"Where is my wife, Salvation Yeo?"
"With the Lord."
"Amen!" says the old man, with a short shudder."I thought so much; and my two boys?""With the Lord."
The old man catches Yeo by the arm.
"How, then?" It is Yeo's turn to shudder now.
"Killed in Panama, fighting the Spaniards; sailing with Mr.
Oxenham; and 'twas I led 'em into it.May God and you forgive me!""They couldn't die better, cousin Yeo.Where's my girl Grace?""Died in childbed."
"Any childer?"
"No."
The old man covers his face with his hands for a while.
"Well, I've been alone with the Lord these fifteen years, so I must not whine at being alone a while longer--'t won't be long.""Put this coat on your back, uncle," says some one.
"No; no coats for me.Naked came I into the world, and naked I go out of it this day, if I have a chance.You'm better to go to your work, lads, or the big one will have the wind of you yet.""So she will," said Amyas, who has overheard; but so great is the curiosity on all hands, that he has some trouble in getting the men to quarters again; indeed, they only go on condition of parting among themselves with them the new-comers, each to tell his sad and strange story.How after Captain Hawkins, constrained by famine, had put them ashore, they wandered in misery till the Spaniards took them; how, instead of hanging them (as they at first intended), the Dons fed and clothed them, and allotted them as servants to various gentlemen about Mexico, where they throve, turned their hands (like true sailors) to all manner of trades, and made much money, and some of them were married, even to women of wealth; so that all went well, until the fatal year 1574, when, "much against the minds of many of the Spaniards themselves, that cruel and bloody Inquisition was established for the first time in the Indies;" and how from that moment their lives were one long tragedy; how they were all imprisoned for a year and a half, not for proselytizing, but simply for not believing in transubstantiation; racked again and again, and at last adjudged to receive publicly, on Good Friday, 1575, some three hundred, some one hundred stripes, and to serve in the galleys for six or ten years each; while, as the crowning atrocity of the Moloch sacrifice, three of them were burnt alive in the market-place of Mexico; a story no less hideous than true, the details whereof whoso list may read in Hakluyt's third volume, as told by Philip Miles, one of that hapless crew; as well as the adventures of Job Hortop, a messmate of his, who, after being sent to Spain, and seeing two more of his companions burnt alive at Seville, was sentenced to row in the galleys ten years, and after that to go to the "everlasting prison remediless;" from which doom, after twenty-three years of slavery, he was delivered by the galleon Dudley, and came safely home to Redriff.
The fate of Hortop and his comrades was, of course, still unknown to the rescued men; but the history even of their party was not likely to improve the good feeling of the crew toward the Spanish ship which was two miles to leeward of them, and which must be fought with, or fled from, before a quarter of an hour was past.
So, kneeling down upon the deck, as many a brave crew in those days did in like case, they "gave God thanks devoutly for the favor they had found;" and then with one accord, at Jack's leading, sang one and all the Ninety-fourth Psalm:*"Oh, Lord, thou dost revenge all wrong;
Vengeance belongs to thee," etc.
* The crew of the Tobie, cast away on the Barbary coast a few years after, "began with heavy hearts to sing the twelfth Psalm, 'Help, Lord, for good and godly men,' etc.Howbeit, ere we had finished four verses, the waves of the sea had stopped the breaths of most."And then again to quarters; for half the day's work, or more than half, still remained to be done; and hardly were the decks cleared afresh, and the damage repaired as best it could be, when she came ranging up to leeward, as closehauled as she could.
She was, as I said, a long flush-decked ship of full five hundred tons, more than double the size, in fact, of the Rose, though not so lofty in proportion; and many a bold heart beat loud, and no shame to them, as she began firing away merrily, determined, as all well knew, to wipe out in English blood the disgrace of her late foil.
