“Presently,” he said, “you will suffer me to place you under cover.”

“I can see best from here,” she answered him.  And added quietly:  “I am praying for this Englishman.  He must be very brave.”

Under his breath Lord Julian damned the fellow’s bravery.

The Arabella was advancing now along a course which, if continued, must carry her straight between the two Spanish ships.  My lord pointed it out.  “He’s crazy surely!” he cried.  “He’s driving straight into a death-trap.  He’ll be crushed to splinters between the two.  No wonder that black-faced Don is holding his fire.  In his place, I should do the same.”

But even at that moment the Admiral raised his hand; in the waist, below him, a trumpet blared, and immediately the gunner on the prow touched off his guns.  As the thunder of them rolled out, his lordship saw ahead beyond the English ship and to larboard of her two heavy splashes.  Almost at once two successive spurts of flame leapt from the brass cannon on the Arabella’s beak-head, and scarcely had the watchers on the poop seen the shower of spray, where one of the shots struck the water near them, then with a rending crash and a shiver that shook the Milagrosa from stem to stern, the other came to lodge in her forecastle.  To avenge that blow, the Hidalga blazed at the Englishman with both her forward guns.  But even at that short range — between two and three hundred yards — neither shot took effect.

At a hundred yards the Arabella’s forward guns, which had meanwhile been reloaded, fired again at the Milagrosa, and this time smashed her bowsprit into splinters; so that for a moment she yawed wildly to port.  Don Miguel swore profanely, and then, as the helm was put over to swing her back to her course, his own prow replied.  But the aim was too high, and whilst one of the shots tore through the Arabella’s shrouds and scarred her mainmast, the other again went wide.  And when the smoke of that discharge had lifted, the English ship was found almost between the Spaniards, her bows in line with theirs and coming steadily on into what his lordship deemed a death-trap.

Lord Julian held his breath, and Miss Bishop gasped, clutching the rail before her.  She had a glimpse of the wickedly grinning face of Don Miguel, and the grinning faces of the men at the guns in the waist.

At last the Arabella was right between the Spanish ships prow to poop and poop to prow.  Don Miguel spoke to the trumpeter, who had mounted the quarter-deck and stood now at the Admiral’s elbow.  The man raised the silver bugle that was to give the signal for the broadsides of both ships.  But even as he placed it to his lips, the Admiral seized his arm, to arrest him.  Only then had he perceived what was so obvious — or should have been to an experienced sea-fighter:  he had delayed too long and Captain Blood had outmanoeuvred him.  In attempting to fire now upon the Englishman, the Milagrosa and her consort would also be firing into each other.  Too late he ordered his helmsman to put the tiller hard over and swing the ship to larboard, as a preliminary to manoeuvring for a less impossible position of attack.  At that very moment the Arabella seemed to explode as she swept by.  Eighteen guns from each of her flanks emptied themselves at that point-blank range into the hulls of the two Spanish vessels.