zled hair.

"Another leak!" he cried. "I pray to Saint Leonard to bear us up this
day! Twenty of my shipmen are bailing with buckets, but the water rises
on them fast. The vessel may not float another hour."

The Prince had snatched a crossbow from one of his attendants and
leveled it at the Spaniard's tops. At the very instant when the seaman
stood erect with a fresh bar in his hands, the bolt took him full in
the face, and his body fell forward over the parapet, hanging there
head downward. A howl of exultation burst from the English at the sight,
answered by a wild roar of anger from the Spaniards. A seaman had run
from the Lion's hold and whispered in the ear of the shipman. He turned
an ashen face upon the Prince.

"It is even as I say, sire. The ship is sinking beneath our feet!" he
cried.

"The more need that we should gain another," said he. "Sir Henry Stokes,
Sir Thomas Stourton, William, John of Clifton, here lies our road!
Advance my banner, Thomas de Mohun! On, and the day is ours!"

By a desperate scramble a dozen men, the Prince at their head, gained
a footing on the edge of the Spaniard's deck. Some slashed furiously to
clear a space, others hung over, clutching the rail with one hand and
pulling up their comrades from below. Every instant that they could hold
their own their strength increased, till twenty had become thirty and
thirty forty, when of a sudden the newcomers, still reaching forth to
their comrades below, saw the deck beneath them reel and vanish in a
swirling sheet of foam. The Prince's ship had foundered.

A yell went up from the Spaniards as they turned furiously upon the
small band who had reached their deck. Already the Prince and his men
had carried the poop, and from that high station they beat back their
swarming enemies. But crossbow darts pelted and thudded among their
ranks till a third of their number were stretched upon the planks. Lined
across the deck they could hardly keep an unbroken front to the leaping,
surging crowd who pressed upon them. Another rush, or another after
that, must assuredly break them, for these dark men of Spain, hardened
by an endless struggle with the Moors, were fierce and stubborn
fighters. But hark to this sudden roar upon the farther side of them--

"Saint George! Saint George! A Knolles to the rescue!" A small craft
had run alongside and sixty men had swarmed on the deck of the St. Iago.
Caught between two fires, the Spaniards wavered and br