later the hulls of the two ships crashed together, the grappling irons
were thrown at the precise instant that the _Nonsuch_ poured a
destructive broadside into her antagonist, and before the ships had time
to recoil from the impact, George, at the head of some fifty boarders,
leapt from the one ship to the other, and the party proceeded to lay
about them with sword, pike, and musket butt with such fell
determination that after a few seconds' resistance on the part of the
Spaniards the latter flung down their weapons and called for quarter.

George turned to the officer, who had now descended from the poop to the
main deck and was valiantly fighting, single-handed, with his back to
the front of the poop cabins, and cried to him:

"Do you surrender, senor?"

"I will, if you will promise me good _guerra_, senor," replied the
Spaniard, dexterously parrying the thrust of a pikeman and running his
antagonist neatly through the shoulder.

"Then stop, men; hold your hands, and leave this cavalier to me," cried
George, dashing in and striking up the points of the English weapons
that still threatened the Spaniard. Then, as the men drew sullenly and
unwillingly back, the young captain advanced, with lowered point, and
his left hand held out. "Your sword, senor," he demanded. "On the word
of an Englishman, I promise you _buena guerra_."

Whereupon the Don, taking his sword by the point, tendered it, hilt
first, with a bow, to George, who tucked it under his left arm, bowing
in turn as he received it. And so the _Santa Maria_, fifty tons bigger
than the _Nonsuch_, and carrying even more guns, with a crew which, at
the beginning of the action, had numbered one hundred and thirty, became
the first prize of George's prowess and that of the Devon mastiffs.

CHAPTER SIX.

HOW THEY CAME TO A DESERT ISLAND AND BURIED THEIR TREASURE.

The ships being still held fast together by the chains of the grappling
irons, and driving slowly down the channel before the wind, George first
ordered the _Nonsuch_ to be brought to an anchor; and when this was done
he further instructed Dyer to take steps for the effectual securing of
the unwounded prisoners, and the tending of the wounded on both sides.
Then, inviting the officer who had surrendered to him--and whom he
rightly assumed to be the captain of the prize--to accompany him into
the state cabin of the captured ship, he formally introduced himself as
Senor Don George Saint Leger