“There he is!” shouts Amyas, springing to the starboard side of the ship.  The men, too, have already caught sight of that hated sign; a cheer of fury bursts from every throat.

“Steady, men!” says Amyas, in a suppressed voice.  “Not a shot!  Re-load, and be ready; I must speak with him first;” and silent as the grave, amid the infernal din, the Vengeance glides up to the Spaniard’s quarter.

“Don Guzman Maria Magdalena Sotomayor de Soto!” shouts Amyas from the mizzen rigging, loud and clear amid the roar.

He has not called in vain.  Fearless and graceful as ever, the tall, mail-clad figure of his foe leaps up upon the poop-railing, twenty feet above Amyas’s head, and shouts through his vizor,—­

“At your service, sir whosoever you may be.”

A dozen muskets and arrows are levelled at him; but Amyas frowns them down.  “No man strikes him but I. Spare him, if you kill every other soul on board.  Don Guzman!  I am Captain Sir Amyas Leigh; I proclaim you a traitor and a ravisher, and challenge you once more to single combat, when and where you will.”

“You are welcome to come on board me, sir,” answers the Spaniard, in a clear, quiet tone; “bringing with you this answer, that you lie in your throat;” and lingering a moment out of bravado, to arrange his scarf, he steps slowly down again behind the bulwarks.

“Coward!” shouts Amyas at the top of his voice.

The Spaniard re-appears instantly.  “Why that name, senor, of all others?” asks he in a cool, stern voice.

“Because we call men cowards in England, who leave their wives to be burnt alive by priests.”

The moment the words had passed Amyas’s lips, he felt that they were cruel and unjust.  But it was too late to recall them.  The Spaniard started, clutched his sword-hilt, and then hissed back through his closed vizor,—­

“For that word, sirrah, you hang at my yardarm, if Saint Mary gives me grace.”

“See that your halter be a silken one, then,” laughed Amyas, “for I am just dubbed knight.”  And he stepped down as a storm of bullets rang through the rigging round his head; the Spaniards are not as punctilious as he.

“Fire!” His ordnance crash through the stern-works of the Spaniard; and then he sails onward, while her balls go humming harmlessly through his rigging.

Half-an-hour has passed of wild noise and fury; three times has the Vengeance, as a dolphin might, sailed clean round and round the Sta.  Catharina, pouring in broadside after broadside, till the guns are leaping to the deck-beams with their own heat, and the Spaniard’s sides are slit and spotted in a hundred places.  And yet, so high has been his fire in return, and so strong the deck defences of the Vengeance, that a few spars broken, and two or three men wounded by musketry, are all her loss.  But still the Spaniard endures, magnificent as ever; it is the battle of the thresher and the whale; the end is certain, but the work is long.