“Must we fire upon the slaves?” asked more than one, as the thought crossed him.

Amyas sighed.

“Spare them all you can, in God’s name; but if they try to run us down, rake them we must, and God forgive us.”

The two galleys came on abreast of each other, some forty yards apart.  To outmanoeuvre their oars as he had done the ship’s sails, Amyas knew was impossible.  To run from them was to be caught between them and the ship.

He made up his mind, as usual, to the desperate game.

“Lay her head up in the wind, helmsman, and we will wait for them.”

They were now within musket-shot, and opened fire from their bow-guns; but, owing to the chopping sea, their aim was wild.  Amyas, as usual, withheld his fire.

The men stood at quarters with compressed lips, not knowing what was to come next.  Amyas, towering motionless on the quarter-deck, gave his orders calmly and decisively.  The men saw that he trusted himself, and trusted him accordingly.

The Spaniards, seeing him wait for them, gave a shout of joy—­was the Englishman mad?  And the two galleys converged rapidly, intending to strike him full, one on each bow.

They were within forty yards—­another minute, and the shock would come.  The Englishman’s helm went up, his yards creaked round, and gathering way, he plunged upon the larboard galley.

“A dozen gold nobles to him who brings down the steersman!” shouted Cary, who had his cue.

And a flight of arrows from the forecastle rattled upon the galley’s quarter-deck.

Hit or not hit, the steersman lost his nerve, and shrank from the coming shock.  The galley’s helm went up to port, and her beak slid all but harmless along Amyas’s bow; a long dull grind, and then loud crack on crack, as the Rose sawed slowly through the bank of oars from stem to stern, hurling the wretched slaves in heaps upon each other; and ere her mate on the other side could swing round, to strike him in his new position, Amyas’s whole broadside, great and small, had been poured into her at pistol-shot, answered by a yell which rent their ears and hearts.

“Spare the slaves!  Fire at the soldiers!” cried Amyas; but the work was too hot for much discrimination; for the larboard galley, crippled but not undaunted, swung round across his stern, and hooked herself venomously on to him.

It was a move more brave than wise; for it prevented the other galley from returning to the attack without exposing herself a second time to the English broadside; and a desperate attempt of the Spaniards to board at once through the stern-ports and up the quarter was met with such a demurrer of shot and steel, that they found themselves in three minutes again upon the galley’s poop, accompanied, to their intense disgust, by Amyas Leigh and twenty English swords.