Thereafter followed a bloody fight such as outweighed the capture of Cadiz.There was room for no manocuvre, scarcely could we move back and forth a yard. On the quarter deck above the main cabins there was besides myself, Captain Smith, Major George, Lumsden and twelve others. Onto this deck leaped upwards of a score of Spaniards in armour attacking with a fury that seemed to stem from the defeat at Cadiz. Above our heads men fired and were fired on and then were attacked in hand to hand combat by climbing Spaniards.
I stood almost touching shoulders with Major George and we beat off the first wave of men. All the time as he thrust and killed he was grinning like a wolf. Lumsden was the first to go, stabbed through the throat; the sailor beside me was then killed by a musket ball; but I wounded the man who had killed Lumsden. Four others died and the deck was slippery. Two Spaniards attacked Captain Smith and his black beard ran red before he disappeared among the trampling feet. Major George seeing the end near snatched up the harquebus he had laid beside the mast, and by firing the wheel-lock close against a pyramid of powder he set off an explosion which scorched the bandages on his face. Bangs like fire-crackers followed as the powder blew along the fine of the fuse. A dozen English sailors leapt into the sea, but no others could move before a giant explosion blew all the middle of the ship away. A fountain of bodies and spars and burning sails spewed over the sky …
I was lying beside the dead Captain Smith. Blood was still trickling gently from under his black beard. A weight was across my legs. Men were shouting, crying, cursing in three languages. Major George miraculously still stood upright, his right arm hung useless; his left he held up in a token of surrender. Three Spanish officers climbing over the side were in time to accept it and prevent him from being cut down. I lifted my head: the quarter deck was a shambles, a score dead and half as many grievously wounded; but it was not aslant; the great explosion while blowing the heart out of Peter of Anchusen had not yet begun to sink her.
A Spanish sailor bent over me with his cutlass; it dripped spots of blood on my cheek before an officer called him away. I dragged myself from under a fallen body, putting my hand on Captain Jones’s shoulder to lever a sitting position; then I scrambled up and stood beside George.
The whole centre of the ship was a mass of twisted wreckage and mangled corpses, more than half of them Spanish where they had been caught swarming into the hatches. All three galleys were around us and further fight was hopeless. The other three galleys were pursuing the little Maybird, but I saw her sails flapping, and then looking beyond you could just see movement from the rest of our fleet. But for us the wind had come too late.
We were taken below; Victor and Lieutenant Fraser were unhurt. Twenty English were packed into the one cabin, some of them seriously wounded, and the door slammed. We crowded to the two portholes watching for sign of smoke or flame, wondering if we were to be burned alive in the ship. Presently we felt her begin to move, but it was not the movement of a vessel under sail. A slight pulse to the motion told us that one of the galleys had taken us in tow.
As Peter of Anchllsen swung round our view swung too and we could see Maybird, her sails billowing fitfully, still moving away; as far as could be seen only one galley was now pursuing her, and all the English fleet was converging from the other quarter.
Running feet overhead and Spanish voices shouting; an older man by the door was dying; we dragged him towards the window to get more air. Major George’s right hand had lost two fingers and was badly lacerated; I tried to bandage it.
So in the stifling heat of the small cabin we spent the rest of the morning. Although now under sail as well, we were still being towed for extra speed. It meant the English were in pursuit. Maybird, Victor reported from the other porthole, had evaded her pursuers at the last, but he could no longer see any other vessel except one galley keeping us silent company a cable’s length away. By the position of the sun we were steering west-nor’-west. I glanced out at this consort of ours and watched the regular unrelenting sweep of the oars. The future as I could see it now held no hope. The hideous improbable mischance by which we had been captured when sailing home after a famous victory and escorted by powerful warships was too much to bear.
In the afternoon the wind freshened, and the galleys proceeded under sail only. Towards evening we altered course to north, and soon the land closed in.
Another man died, and the two corpses were laid against the bulkhead. No one had brought us water yet, and the wounded were pressed for lack of it.
When it was dark we could see the lights of a village quite close; we had entered a river or creek. We began to move more slowly and then came to a stop, with the rattle of our anchor— chain and shouts from shore.
At last the door was flung open. We blinked in the torchlight as we were led out for examination.
I went into the room with Major George. Three officers sat at a table. The centre one, who was smooth-skinned and dark as a Moor, I later knew to be Admiral Don Juan Portocarrero himself. He looked an angry and a worried man.
“Please to tell your name, your office, your nationality,” said the man on his left in an English spoken with so guttural an accent that unless one attended carefully the words were lost.
“George. Major of Vere’s Own. English.”
With a fan Portocarrero was stirring the air before his face. Insects droned endlessly round the flickering candles. There was a smell of cooking; we had had nothing to eat since yesterday.
“You have a wife?”
“Yes.”
“And after that?”
“Two sons.”
“You have rich relations? Friends?” “‘No.”
The questioning went on for perhaps another three minutes, then the English-speaking one translated what he had learned. The three officers conferred together in undertones.
Portocarrero said something in Spanish which I understood. “For exchange.”
As he was led away George glanced back at me out of his one bloodshot eye. “So long, lad. If you’re in England before me, take a swill of good beer and swallow it for me.”
I wondered what had happened to Victor.
“Please to tell your name, your office, your nationality.”
“Killigrew, secretary, English.”
“You are married?”
“No.”
“Who is your father?”
“John Killigrew.”
“Where do you come from?”
“Cornwall.”
“You have rich relatives?”
“No.”
There were horses moving in the stables under this room. The man on Portocarrero’s right had a scar from lip to eye which gave him a perpetual stare. Portocarrero, who had not taken his gaze from me since I gave my name, began to question me through the other officer.
“What is your first name?”
“Maugan.”
“Have you been in Spain before?”
I hesitated briefly. “Yes.”
“For what purpose?”
“I was brought here by force.”
“When was this?”
“Two and a half years ago.”
“Were you exchanged or did you escape?”
“I was … exchanged in the summer of ‘94.”
They discussed me in undertones.
“If you are a scrivener for Sir Walter Ralegh, why are you sent back to England now?”
“I was wounded.”
“But not seriously. You are the least wounded of them all.” “I was to escort back Mr Hardwicke, who is a cousin of Sir Walter Ralegh’s.”