Martin Conisby

The enemy having yielded to our mercy and struck their flag, we ceased our fire, and thinking the worst, over and done, I watched where Belvedere conned the ship with voice and gesture and the crew, mighty quick and dexterous in obedience, proved themselves prime sailor-men, despite their loose and riotous ways, so that, coming down upon the enemy, we presently fell aboard of them by the fore-chains; whereupon up scrambled old Resolution, sword in hand, first of any man (despite his lameness) and with a cry of "Boarders away!" sprang down upon the Spaniard's blood-spattered deck and his powder-blackened rogues leaping and hallooing on his heels.

And now from these poor, deluded souls who had cast themselves upon our mercy rose sudden awful shrieks and cries hateful to be heard as they fled hither and thither about their littered decks before the pitiless steel that hacked and thrust and smote. Shivering and sweating, I must needs watch this thing done until, grown faint and sick, I bowed my face that I might see no more. Gradually these distressful sounds grew weaker and weaker, and dying away at last, were lost in the fierce laughter and jubilant shouting of their murderers, where they fell to the work of pillage.

But hearing sudden roar of alarm, I looked up to see the Spanish ship was going down rapidly by the head, whereupon was wild uproar and panic, some of our rogues cutting away at the grapples even before their comrades had scrambled back to safety; so was strife amongst them and confusion worse confounded. The last man was barely aboard than our yards were braced round and we stood away clear of this sinking ship. Now presently uproar broke out anew and looking whence it proceeded, I beheld four Spaniards (who it seemed had leapt aboard us unnoticed in the press), and these miserable wretches methought would be torn in pieces. But thither swaggered Belvedere, flourishing his pistols and ordering his rogues back, and falls to questioning these prisoners and though I could not hear, I saw how they cast themselves upon their knees, with hands upraised to heaven, supplicating his mercy. He stood with arms folded, nodding his head now and then as he listened, so that I began to have some hopes that he would spare them; but all at once he gestured with his arms, whereon was a great gust of laughter and cheering, and divers men began rigging a wide plank out-board from the gangway amidships, whiles others hasted to pinion these still supplicating wretches. This done, they seized upon one, and hoisting him up on the plank with his face to the sea, betook them to pricking him with sword and pike, thus goading him to walk to his death. So this miserable, doomed man crept out along the plank, whimpering pleas for mercy to the murderers behind him and prayers for mercy to the God above him, until he was come to the plank's end and cowered there, raising and lowering his bound hands in his agony while he gazed down into the merciless sea that was to engulf him. All at once he stood erect, his fettered hands upraised to heaven, and then with a piteous, wailing cry he plunged down to his death and vanished 'mid the surge; once he came up, struggling and gasping, ere he was swept away in the race of the tide.