re arose from the galleon a deafening cry of triumph.

Ferne, erect against the break of the _Cygnet's_ poop, drawing a cloth
tight with teeth and hand above a wound in his arm from which the blood
was streaming, smiled at the sound, knotted his tourniquet; then for the
third time sprang upon that slanting, deadly bridge of straining ropes.
His sword flashed above his head.

"Follow me--follow me!" he cried, and his face, turned over his
shoulder, looked upon his men. A drifting smoke wreath obscured his
form; then it passed, and he stood in the galleon's storm of shot,
poised above them, a single figure breathing war. Seen through the
glare, the face was serene; only the eyes commanded and compelled. The
voice rang like a trumpet. "St. George and Merry England! Come on,
men!--come on, come on!"

They poured over the side and across the chasm dividing them from their
foes. A resistless force they came, following the gleam of a lifted
sword, the "On--on!" of a loved leader's voice. Sir Mortimer touched the
galleon's side, ran through the body a man of Seville whose sword-point
offered at his throat, and stood the next moment upon the poop of the
_San Jose_ Robert Baldry, a cutlass between his teeth, sprang after him;
then came Sedley and Arden and the tide of the English.

The Spanish captain met his death, as was fitting, at Ferne's hand; the
commandant of the soldiers fell to the share of Henry Sedley. The young
man fought with dilated eyes, and white lips pressed together. Sir
Mortimer, who fought with narrowed eyes, who, quite ungarrulous by
nature, yet ever grew talkative in such an hour as this, found time to
note his lieutenant's deeds, to throw to the brother of the woman he
loved a "Well done, dear lad!" Sedley held his head high; his leader's
praise wrought in him like wine. He had never seen a man who did not his
best beneath the eyes of Sir Mortimer Ferne.... There, above the
opposite angle of the poop, red gold, now seen but dimly through the
reek of the guns, now in a moment of clear sunshine flaunting it
undefiled, streamed the Spanish flag. Between him and that emblem of
world-power the press was thick, for around it at bay were gathered many
valiant men of Spain, fighting for their own. They who by the law of the
strong were to inherit from them had yet to break that phalanx. Sedley
threw himself forward, beat down a veteran of the Indies, swept on
towards the goal of that hated banner. His enemies wi