第19章

"They will wipe us off the face of the earth!" he lamented. "There won't be an Englishman left in America! they'll come close in upon us! they'll batter down the fort with their culverins; they'll turn all their swivels, sakers, and falcons upon us; they'll throw into our midst stinkpots and grenades; they'll mow us down with chain shot! Their gunners never miss!" His voice rose to a scream, and he shook as with an ague. "Are you mad? It's Spain that's to be fought! Spain the rich! Spain the powerful! Spain the lord of the New World!"

"It's England that fights!" I cried. "For very shame, hold thy tongue!"

"If we surrender at once, they'll let us go!" he whined. "We can take the small boats and get to the Bermudas. they'll let us go."

"Into the galleys," muttered West.

The craven tried another feint. "Think of the women and children!"

"We do," I said sternly. "Silence, fool!"

The Governor, a brave and honest man, rose from the keg of powder. "All this is foreign to the matter, Master Sharpless. I think our duty is clear, be the odds what they may. This is our post, and we will hold it or die beside it. We are few in number, but we are England in America, and I think we will remain here. This is the King's fifth kingdom, and we will keep it for him. We will trust in the Lord and fight it out."

"Amen," I said, and "Amen," said the ring of Councilors and Burgesses and the armed men beyond.

The hum of voices now rose into excited cries, and the watchman stationed atop the big culverin called out, "Sail ho!" With one accord we turned our faces downstream. There was the ship, undoubtedly. Moreover, a strong breeze had sprung up, blowing from the sea, filling her white sails, and rapidly lessening the distance between us. As yet we could only tell that she was indeed a large ship with all sail set.

Through the gates of the palisade now came, pellmell, the crowd without. In ten minutes' time the women were in line ready to load the muskets, the children sheltered as best they might be, the men in ranks, the gunners at their guns, and the flag up. I had run it up with my own hand, and as I stood beneath the folds Master Sparrow and my wife came to my side.

"The women are over there," I said to the latter, "where you had best betake yourself."

"I prefer to stay here," she answered. "I am not afraid." Her color was high, and she held her head up. " My father fought the Armada," she said.

"Get me a sword from that man who is giving them out."

From his coign of vantage the watch now called out: "She's a long ship, - five hundred tons, anyhow! Lord! the metal that she carries!

She's rasedecked!"

"Then she's Spanish, sure enough!" cried the Governor.

From the crowd of servants, felons, and foreigners rose a great clamor, and presently we made out Sharpless perched on a cask in their midst and wildly gesticulating.

"The Tiger, the Truelove, and the Due Return have swung across channel!" announced the watch. "They 've trained their guns on the Spaniard!"

The Englishmen cheered, but the bastard crew about Sharpless groaned. Extreme fear had made the lawyer shameless. "What guns have those boats?" he screamed. "Two falcons apiece and a handful of muskets, and they go out against a man-of-war! She'll trample them underfoot! She'll sink them with a shot apiece! The Tiger is forty tons, and the Truelove is sixty. You 're all mad!"

"Sometimes quality beats quantity," said West.

"Didst ever hear of the Content?" sang out a gunner.

"Or of the Merchant Royal?" cried another.

"Or of the Revenge?" quoth Master Jeremy Sparrow. "Go hang thyself, coward, or, if you choose, swim out to the Spaniard, and shift from thy wet doublet and hose into a sanbenito. Let the don come, shoot if he can, and land if he will! We'll singe his beard in Virginia as we did at Cales!

'The great St. Philip, the pride of the Spaniards, Was burnt to the bottom and sunk in the sea. the St. Andrew and eke the St. Matthew We took in fight manfully and brought away.'

And so we'll do with this one, my masters! We'll sink her, or we'll take her and send her against her own galleons and galleasses!

'Dub-a-dub, dub-a-dub, thus strike their drums, Tantara, tantara, the Englishman comes!' "