red with musket-balls. She was oozing
blood from her scuppers, yet "the old and stout Spaniard" in command,
was cheerily giving shot for shot. "Indeed, to give our enemies their
due, no men in the world did ever act more bravely than these
Spaniards."

Ringrose's canoa was the first to second Captain Sawkins. She ran close
in, "under Peralta's side," and poured in a blasting full volley through
her after gun-ports. A scrap of blazing wad fell among the red-clay
powder jars in the after magazine. Before she could fire a shot in
answer, she blew up abaft. Ringrose from the canoa "saw his men blown
up, that were abaft the mast, some of them falling on the deck, and
others into the sea." But even this disaster did not daunt old Peralta.
Like a gallant sea-captain, he slung a bowline round his waist, and went
over the side, burnt as he was, to pick up the men who had been blown
overboard. The pirates fired at him in the water, but the bullets missed
him. He regained his ship, and the fight went on. While the old man was
cheering the wounded to their guns, "another jar of powder took fire
forward," blowing the gun's crews which were on the fo'c's'le into the
sea. The forward half of the ship caught fire, and poured forth a volume
of black smoke, in the midst of which Richard Sawkins boarded, and "took
the ship." A few minutes later, Basil Ringrose went on board, to give
what aid he could to the hurt. "And indeed," he says, "such a miserable
sight I never saw in my life, for not one man there was found, but was
either killed, desperately wounded, or horribly burnt with powder,
insomuch that their black skins [the ship was manned with negroes] were
turned white in several places, the powder having torn it from their
flesh and bones." But if Peralta's ship was a charnel-house, the
admiral's flagship was a reeking slaughter-pen. Of her eighty-six
sailors, sixty-one had been killed. Of the remaining twenty-five, "only
eight were able to bear arms, all the rest being desperately wounded,
and by their wounds totally disabled to make any resistance, or defend
themselves. Their blood ran down the decks in whole streams, and scarce
one place in the ship was found that was free from blood." The loss on
the Tawnymores' ship was never known, but there had been such "bloody
massacre" aboard her, that two other barques, in Panama Roads, had been
too scared to join battle, though they had got under sail to engage.
According to Ringrose, the