orders to square the yards.

I shouted again, but my voice must have been drowned in the creaking
of blocks and yards. They were alert enough for every chance of getting
away--for every flaw of wind. Already the ship was less distinct, as if
my eyes had grown dim. By the time a voice on board her cried, "Belay,"
faintly, she had gone from my sight. Then the puff of wind passed away,
too, and left us more alone than ever, with only the small disk of the
moon poised vertically above the mists.

"Listen," said Tomas Castro, after what seemed an eternity of
crestfallen silence.

He need not have spoken; there could be no doubt that Manuel had lost
himself, and my belief is that the ship had sailed right into the midst
of the flotilla. There was an unmistakable character of surprise in the
distant tumult that arose suddenly, and as suddenly ceased for a space
of a breath or two. "Now, Castro," I shouted. "Ha! _bueno!_"

We gave way with a vigour that seemed to lift the dinghy out of the
water. The uproar gathered volume and fierceness.

From the first it was a hand-to-hand contest, engaged in suddenly, as if
the assailants had at once managed to board in a body, and, as it were,
in one unanimous spring. No shots had been fired. Too far to hear the
blows, and seeing nothing as yet of the ship, we seemed to be hastening
towards a deadly struggle of voices, of shadows with leathern throats;
every cry heard in battle was there--rage, encouragement, fury, hate,
and pain. And those of pain were amazingly distinct. They were yells;
they were howls. And suddenly, as we approached the ship, but before we
could make out any sign of her, we came upon a boat. We had to swerve
to clear her. She seemed to have dropped out of the fight in utter
disarray; she lay with no oars out, and full of men who writhed and
tumbled over each other, shrieking as if they had been flayed. Above the
writhing figures in the middle of the boat, a tall man, upright in the
stern-sheets, raved awful imprecations and shook his fists above his
head.

The blunt dinghy foamed past that vision within an oar's length, no
more, making straight for the clamour of the fight. The last puff of
wind must have thinned the fog in the ship's track; for, standing up,
face forward to pull stroke, I saw her come out, stern-on to us, from
truck to water-line, mistily tall and motionless, but resounding with
the most fierce and desperate noises. A cluster of empty boats clu