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