death for want of
attention to his wound.

Harry looked round for some instrument with which to force the door, and
his eye fell upon a handspike, probably dropped by some flying foe.
Seizing this, he smashed madly at the door, till at length the panel
splintered under his frantic blows; then, putting his hand through the
opening, he felt for the latch, found it, and the door opened at his
touch.

Once again raising Roger in his arms, he staggered blindly along; and at
last, bleeding from contact with splinters, and his hands almost raw
with wielding the handspike, he reached the foot of the companion-ladder
and dashed up it with his still inanimate burden in his arms.

On reaching the deck he saw that the grapnels had been cut, the three
English vessels had drifted some hundreds of yards away, and were even
then engaging the three other Spanish ships which had come up; and the
air was again full of the roar of cannon, the crashing of timbers,
falling of masts, shrieks, groans, cries, orders, and imprecations.

The Spanish ship which had been in company with the craft that caught
fire had vanished, and only a few timbers and fragments were floating on
the surface; she had evidently been sunk by the terrible fire of the
English guns.

The ship on which they now were, the _Maria Dolorosa_, was by this time
a spouting fountain of flame, from her bows as far aft as her mainmast.
Her guns were exploding one after another as the fire reached them, and
added their thunder to the already awful din.

Harry raised his voice, and shouted over the water with all the power of
his lungs to the English ships, but the continued roar of the cannon,
mingled with the rattling crash of musketry volleys, the shouted
commands of the officers, the hoarse outcries of toiling and fighting
men, and the crash of rending wood as the broadsides tore their way into
the vitals of the reeling ships effectually drowned his outcries; while
everybody was far too busily engaged to notice his critical situation.

"Ah, Roger!" said he, apostrophising the inanimate figure that lay at
his feet as he stood at the extreme edge of the poop, in order to be as
far away from the furnace heat as possible,--"Ah, Roger, I fear, dear
lad, that our lives are coming to an end even before we are fairly
launched on our adventures! Oh, why cannot they--!"

At this moment there was a roar as if all earth and heaven were
dissolving in chaos, and Harry, feeling as if