'Bloody stupid officers!' grunted Mannion. 'Makin' heroic gestures and risking good men's lives.'
'What's he doing?' asked Gresham, incredulously. A group of seven or so English ships had approached one wing of the Armada. The Spanish had immediately tried to lay alongside the English ships and grapple, the English intent on ducking and weaving, firing ragged cannonades all the while. A faint popping noise came to them over the waves, the wind whipping the smoke away. It was a skirmish, like wrestlers dancing round each other, trying to get the measure of their opponent before going in for the throw. Yet whoever was in command seemed to have taken his ship directly into the English fleet, allowed himself to become surrounded, cut off, only one other vessel in support.
'I reckon he's doing it on purpose,' said Mannion, sucking at a hollow tooth. 'If the English think they've got 'im, they'll come in close and maybe he can board one. If that happens, the other ships'll have no choice but to try and board him, and he'll get a melee — just what the Spanish want!'
The incessant cannonade the Spanish ship was receiving seemed to be doing remarkably little damage. Once, twice Gresham gasped as it seemed as if she might get close enough to an English ship for its grappling irons to bite, but each time the vessel ducked away. Finally Sidonia took his own great flagship heeling out of line to join the embattled galleon, drawing it back into the main body of the fleet as the English retreated. By late afternoon it was over.
'So who won that one?' asked Gresham, confused. Mannion shrugged.
'It's a draw. The Spanish can't get at the English, but the English can't get near most of the Spanish.' The bulk of the Armada was sailing with no more than fifty metres between each ship. Any English vessel getting in between them would face overwhelming fire and the certainty of being boarded. 'Bit like a hedgehog,' said Mannion. 'Clever way to fight, you've got to grant them. Though you can flip a hedgehog over and I can't see 'ow you'd flip this bloody fleet over.'
They both turned at the sound of the bell calling the crew to prayer. Both men saw the Dutchman grapple with the powder barrel, heaving it down from the stern where it was parked with three others, a gunner going about his job, ignored by the others. They witnessed the quick look round, the slow match smoking gently stuck to the side of the barrel, watched the man duck over the rail and into the water. An officer caught the motion, turned round with his mouth open to yell… what? A query? An order? No one would ever know, because in that precise moment Hell came to the after-deck of the Spanish galleon San Salvador. There were three separate flashes, half a second between. The first, fiery-orange explosion of the single powder barrel, followed in the flicker of an eyelid by the deep red and yellow of the three other barrels parked on the stern castle and then the brilliant, eyeball-piercing explosion of the powder stored in the deck below. Gresham was looking back, he and Mannion right at the ship's forecastle. The split second warning the sight of the Dutchman had given them forced them instinctively to hurl themselves over the side. As if in slow motion Gresham felt the sinking in the pit of his stomach as they started their plunge into the sea, caught a vast flash of red and yellow even through his tightly-closed lids and then, extraordinarily, felt as if a giant had shoved hugely at his feet and legs, spinning him over and over and over before they hit the sea. His eyes forced open in shock, Gresham felt a savage pain in his eardrums as they were pushed in to implosion, and saw tiny little fountains of white water spring up out of the sea as fragments of debris and men were flung out by the power of the explosion.
For too long the green water passed upwards in front of his eyes. Kicking out and up, he finally surfaced, spluttering. Momentary panic. He could hear nothing. He placed a thumb and forefinger over his nose, swallowed sharply, and with a click he knew he could hear again. Knew because the sound of screaming men was cutting through to his brain. A man was bobbing on the water, one arm clutching ferociously at a baulk of timber, his eyes wide with terror. His other arm had gone at the elbow, and when the water bobbed him up and down only one leg appeared on the surface. Both limbs had been cauterised by the blast, and then sterilised in the salt water. He might even live, thought Gresham. If a man wanted to live with one arm and one leg. Then the stink hit him. Burning wood, of course. But above all a singed smell, like overdone pork on a fire. The smell of burning human flesh.
'There!' said Gresham. That boat! The one from the San Martin’ The vast Spanish fleet had hove to, boats scuttling over the water in a hurried rescue operation. The San Salvador lay dead in the water, her stern shot away, sails mere hanging tatters, smoke rising from her deck and an awful, low keening noise of deeply injured men. Weighed down by their clothes, Gresham and Mannion struggled to one of the boats sent from the flagship. As they struggled closer, a man in the water, burned black by some strange decay, was being pulled on board. The sailor hauling his body was suddenly, violently sick as the burned remnant of the man's arm came away in his hand, the rest of the body flopping back into the water.
'There must be easier ways to get on board the bloody flagship!' said Mannion, spitting sea water out of his mouth as he scorned help and hauled himself over the side of the rescue boat.
When they finally arrived, wet, cold and buffeted, aboard the Duke of Medina Sidonia's flagship, they had nothing except the clothes on their backs arid the handful of gold coins sewn into each of their jackets — the number was limited by their weight and the amount they could still swim with if they found themselves in the sea. Gresham rubbed his eyes, succeeding in making them sting even more from the salt water dripping down his forehead. From the deck of the San Martin he could see the drifting hulk of the San Salvador, but also another great ship in trouble. Something seemed to have snapped off her bowsprit and her mizzenmast had tumbled over. As they watched, the ship's mainmast shivered and fell forward in the driving wind. Someone was asking to note down their names, while a seaman offered them a rough blanket.
From the central position occupied by the flagship Gresham saw a group of English ships form up and follow them at a safe distance. There was shouting on the deck, and what looked like Sidonia's own personal barge was lowered.
'That's two great Spanish ships stumbling in our wake, crammed with God knows what in the way of treasure and booty,' Gresham whispered to Mannion.
'So?' Was Spain already losing this battle, Gresham thought, as he shivered in the cold wind?
'Do you think Drake will see them in his magic glass?'
Later that night Sir Francis Drake extinguished his stern light, stating that he had seen the shadows of ships pass him by, and headed off to capture the Rosario and make himself fifty thousand pounds. He had been tasked with following the Armada, his stern lantern the marker on which the whole of the rest of the English fleet was relying. The ships following him saw the light ahead of them in the dark flicker and fade, but then picked up another dimmer light. Thinking it to be Drake, they put on sail to catch up. When dawn broke, they found they had been marking the lantern of the rearmost vessel of the Armada all night, and were alone and in range of the greatest fleet on earth. The three English vessels heeled about, and withdrew to search for the remainder of the English fleet, thrown into disarray by Drake's action.