With hair and beard floating in the wind, the bronzed naked figure,
like some weird old Indian fakir, still climbed on steadfastly up the
mizzen-chains of the Spaniard, hatchet in hand.
"Come back, Michael! Leap while you may!" shouted a dozen voices.
Michael turned--
"And what should I come back for, then, to go home where no one knoweth
me? I'll die like an Englishman this day, or I'll know the reason
why!" and turning, he sprang in over the bulwarks, as the huge ship
rolled up more and more, like a dying whale, exposing all her long
black hulk almost down to the keel, and one of her lower-deck guns as
if in defiance exploded upright into the air, hurling the ball to the
very heavens.
In an instant it was answered from the _Rose_ by a column of smoke, and
the eighteen-pound ball crashed through the bottom of the defenseless
Spaniard.
"Who fired! Shame to fire on a sinking ship!"
"Gunner Yeo, sir," shouted a voice from the maindeck. "He's like a
madman down here."
"Tell him if he fires again, I'll put him in irons, if he were my own
brother. Cut away the grapples aloft, men. Don't you see how she
drags us over? Cut away, or we shall sink with her.
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