CHAPTER XLIII.

THE BATTLE OF THE MAY.

"He ha' brass within and steel without, With beams on his top-castle strong; And eighteen pieces of ordnance, He carries on each side along. And he hath a pinnace dight, St. Andrew's cross is his guide; The pinnace beareth nine score men, And fifteen guns on each side." _Sir Andro Burton_

The wind had freshened as the _Yellow Frigate_ and her consort bore down the river, and confident in the great size, heavy armament, and complete equipment of those vessels which Sir Alexander Wood was so fond of styling "his own two," he walked to and fro on the poop, whistling for more wind, and all undaunted by the reported strength of the enemy, though Barton, Falconer, and Sir Alexander Mathieson deemed him rash and unwary in leaving so many of his vessels to cruise idly in the river. As the land lessened, Preston Bay opened out on one side and the far-stretching bight of Largo on the other. By this time the five English vessels were in sight, scattered considerably apart, but their white sails were distinctly visible on the dusky blue of the darkening sea and sky. Falconer and Barton were accoutred in polished steel, and were armed with Jedwood axes, sword, and dagger. After having inspected the culverins, moyennes, and sakers with which the forecastle, poop, and main-deck were mounted--after having seen that the bores were clean, the wadding tight, and tackles clear--Willie Wad was placidly regaling himself on cold salt junk and a can of beer with the coxswain of the barge, who was drinking ale from an old gallipot.

Archy the boatswain, and his mate (or yeoman, as they were then named), worked at a grindstone, putting a keener edge on their two-handed swords, axes, and boarding pikes, while they whistled and sang as the sparks of the grinding steel flew to leeward through the open ports; and close by them was a grim old arquebussier, who had served at the siege of Lochmaben, under James II., against the Douglases at Brechin, and at the Bog of Dunkinty, notching his leaden balls with a cross for good luck; and now the Admiral, whose mind was occupied by the hope of victory, was joined by Father Zuill, who under his cassock wore a jazarine jacket and steel gloves, which he was at no pains to conceal.

"Harkee, timoneer," said the Admiral, "keep her head away a point or two towards the north. Yonder headmost ship I take to be the _Cressi_, and if so, I will play her a trick I have not tried since we fought the Portuguese under Antonio de Belem, and sunk his _Lady of Sorrow_. Gadzooks! that Englishman saileth as if he would poke the wind's eye out! We will have a brave moonlight night, Father Zuill; see how brightly she rises above the Lammermuirs."

"Yet I would rather this bout took place by sunlight."

"Why--what! art at thy plaguey burning-glasses again?"

"Thou knowest, Admiral, that Marcellus used his mirrors both in summer and winter----"

"Nay, I know nothing of the kind."

"Unless they were to trim his beard by," said Falconer.

"Out on thee, Davie," said the Admiral; "don't mock our friar, though he hath more crotchets in his poor head than there be strands in a nine-inch cable."

"Yes," mused the priest; "he used them even in the coldest winters against the ships of an enemy; but there is no record of moonbeams setting ought on fire."

"Odds life! I should think not, friar," said the Admiral, looking aloft, and watching the sails of the frigate.

"Would that I could assure thee, Sir Andrew, how a combination of mirrors, all reflecting heat on one point, could set the great globe itself on fire; then how much more so a miserable caravel?"

"Let me see the caravel set on fire first, and I will consider about the world after. So-ho, Burton, the wind is veering round upon our quarter."

"And thou shalt see it, Admiral; for when I construct my parabolic speculum to burn at ten paces, one ten times its size shall consume everything to cinders at a hundred paces. 'Tis plain as a pikestaff."

"Look ye, shipmate," said the Admiral, impatiently, "stick to thy mass, and leave burning and cannonading to those whose trade it is; the gunner to his lintstock, the steersman to his helm----"

"And the cook to the foresheet," interrupted the friar, petulantly finishing the Admiral's invariable proverb, which he had picked up in his old skipper days. "Yet a time shall come when thou and all here shall behold with wonder the effect of my parabolic speculum, when it reflects the fierce solar rays to that point of fire which is the true focus of the parabola."

"Perhaps so," replied the Admiral; "but I never mean to watch thy devilish hurdy-gurdy again. Dost remember when we were off Cape Ushant, how nearly I was brained at the taffrail by the jibbing of the mainboom, when watching these plaguey glasses with which you promised to burn me a hole in the sails of a Spanish lugger?"

"Alas! Laird of Largo," said the learned chaplain, sorrowfully, "thou knowest nought of this noble science--nothing of optics; nothing of epicycles, whose central circle is the circumference of a greater; and nothing of crystalline spheres."

"Hillo! thou'rt at thy magic again," said the Admiral, angrily; "all this is too deep for me, Father Zuill; I am out of soundings, look ye; and if I dived into the abyss of this learning, I should never come up again. Look to the staysails, Barton--the wind cometh more upon the beam."

The _Margaret_ was now half a mile astern. After passing the Bass Rock, they found the wind coming freshly from the south, and saw the English ships closing up fast as they caught the breeze; but still the _Cressi_ was far ahead of the _Harry_, and though a small vessel, which mounted only twenty pieces of ordnance, with a crew of about two hundred men, she stood boldly towards the taller and heavier Scot, with which her crew were intent on grappling--a _tactique_ peculiar to that age; but Wood had no intention of letting her do so, and resolved to rid himself of her company, by serving her as he had served the Admiral of Portugal, when he fought him off the Rock of Lisbon, a few years before.

The light haze had now cleared away from the bosom of the estuary; from a clear, unclouded sky, a gorgeous moon shed a flood of brilliant light upon the wide blue waters, on the coast of East Lothian, that lay sleeping in the silvery distance; on the nearer bluffs of the castled Bass and the low, flat Isle of May, that lay far off towards the north and east. The waves were dancing in green light tipped with silver foam, as they rolled between continent and isle, and the English vessels, with all their canvas set, as they stood towards the foe, looked like gigantic swans or sea-birds floating on the deep.

A red flash from the high forecastle of the _Cressi_ was followed by a gush of pale blue smoke, and then the iron ball of a carthoun howled through the rigging of the frigate, and plunged into the water far off. This irritated the old Laird of Largo, who always loved to have the first fire; and now he blew his whistle--the signal for battle.

"Let fly at her tophamper, Willie Wad," he cried, as a line of lights glittered along the gun-deck; "give us moonlight through her canvas,--cut her cordage and unreeve her rigging."

Simultaneously a flood of red fire and white smoke burst from the low waist and towering fore and _after-castles_ of the two ships, and a storm of shot flew over each, the balls of the _Cressi_, many of them stone bullets from King Henry's quarries at Maidstone, knocked great white splinters from the painted hull and carved galleries of the _Yellow Frigate_, and killed and wounded many of her men; while she in turn cut to pieces the rigging of her enemy, and thus rendered her motions slow and her management difficult.

"We must rid ourselves of this hornet before we engage her companions," said Sir Andrew; "put the ship about, Barton, and remember our prank with the Portuguese."

"'Bout ship," cried Barton, after a few preparations, putting the trumpet through his open helmet; "helm's a-lee;--let go, and haul!"

Round swung the ponderous ship, while loose shot and everything else rolled from windward to leeward, as she stood off on the opposite tack, as if about to creep in shore and fly; and now the increasing breeze filled her canvas, and careened her gracefully over on that bright moonlit sea, which her bows cleft as an arrow cleaves the air. Astonished to find the dreaded Laird of Largo fly before them, the crew of the Cressi gave three hearty English cheers, and had the hardihood to make all sail in chase, firing the light falcons of their forecastle as fast as the cannoniers could bring them to bear upon the towering stern and quarter of the Scot, who while returning the fire, tacked twice, as if to escape.

"Barton, take thou the helm," said Wood, "and keep at your quarters, my yeomen of the sheets and braces. Yo-ho, boatswain! take in all the small sails."

On seeing this, in their nautical or national confidence on the sea, the English crew again believed that now Wood was about to grapple with them, and natheless his superior size, they had no doubt of being able to engage and retain him valiantly until the _Harry_, which was a mile astern, came up.

Though it was an age in which navigation was destitute of many modern inventions and appliances, Wood was as famous for the skilful manner in which he handled his ship as for the bravery with which he fought her, for under his orders, her vast hull, with its towering rigging and cloud of sail, was like a toy. Thus, after a few manoeuvres, the _Cressi_ lay to, and continued firing briskly at the _Yellow Frigate_, which her crew believed was about to run alongside; but in rounding to, her captain, though a brave mariner, had given Wood the advantage of the wind, and while her crew poured in their missiles, cannon and arquebuse-shot, with those clothyard shafts so famed in English war, Barton suddenly put the helm hard up, at a sign from the Admiral, who cried with the voice of a stentor,--

"Yeomen of the braces and bowlines, let go! slack off your sheets and tacks,---yare, my hearts,--yare, and square the yards."

It was all the work of a moment; the blocks creaked, the cordage whistled, the canvas flapped heavily, and filled again, at the tremendous bow of the Scottish caravel was suddenly brought to bear directly upon the broadside of the _Cressi_, whose captain had no time to fill his yards or forge ahead again, for dire confusion and dismay pervaded his crowded decks, from which a hundred mingled cries of rage, wonder, and defiance arose. And there she lay, in the deep valley formed by the long-swelling waves, while her crew bravely fired their culverins at the _Yellow Frigate_, which bore down under a cloud of canvas, looming like the shadow of death between them and the brilliant moon.

On, on she glided, almost noiselessly.

One wave alone separated them!

Then down she came thundering with her iron beak upon the enemy's vessel, striking her right amidships. The wild shriek of rage that rose on one side was mingled with a shout of triumph on the other. The _Yellow Frigate_ scarcely felt the shock, as she rode over the low waist, and crashed through the torn rigging of the _Cressi_, the lofty poop and forecastle of which fell inwards, as the hull was cloven in two, and sunk for ever into that brilliant sea, the vortex of which sucked down two hundred gallant men.

"For God's love, Sir Andrew, lower the boats," cried Falconer, looking into the foam-covered whirlpool, where a few spars and casks, with an occasional head or a hand, were rising and sinking.

"Impossible--even our pinnace would sink with her; but God sain them," said the old Admiral; "there hath gone down many a brave fellow, who will never more lift tack or sheet in this world!"

A loud cheer now rose close astern; it came from the crew of the _Queen Margaret_; and both ships then bore on towards the enemy, leaving the sea covered with the _débris_ of the wreck; and as the old ballad says,--

"Many was the feather-bed, That fluttered on the foam; And many was the gude lord's son, That never mair came home.

"The ladies wrang their fingers white, The maidens tore their hair; A' for the sake o' those true loves, They never shall see mair."

"May they sleep as soundly in the Scottish sea as my father sleeps in their Kentish downs," said Barton; "but many a blue corpselicht will dance on these waters ere the sun of to-morrow rises."

"To your guns again, my merry men all," cried the Admiral "they are two to one against us; but if we put them not to rout we were no better than Gordon gowks, and there will be many a toom bowie and kirn in Fife and Lothian. Heed not King Henry's bitter almonds, for I swear by my honour as a seaman and faith as a knight, that every shipmate o' mine who loseth a fin, shall swing his hammock for life in Largo Tower, and share the goods kind God hath given me; he shall never lack a brass bodle or a can of ale while auld Andrew Wood hath both to part with him fairly over the capstan head; so stand every man to his quarters--put your faith in God and St. Andrew, and fight, my lads, as you have often fought before, for auld Scotland and her glory!"

This characteristic harangue was answered by a hurrah, and many a weatherbeaten and well-bearded visage glowed redly along the gun-deck when the matches were blown, and the waves sparkled in the moonlight, as they ran merrily past the triced-up lids of the open ports through which the brass culverins and guns of Scottish yetlin were run and pointed, after being primed and shotted for battle.

"Sir David Falconer, send thine arquebussiers aft, line the taffrail and fill the tops with them--away aloft!" cried the Admiral, "and shame be on the last who is through the lubber's hole or over the foot-hook shrouds!"

The arquebussiers clambered up the ratlins, and our marines of the present day would be rather amused could they see such a sight as those soldiers presented; heavily accoutred with back, breast, head, and thigh pieces, bandoliers, flasks, and swords--and, more than all, their long arquebusses, crawling like scaly armadilloes up the black rigging. However, they soon reached their perches, and levelled their barrels over the little wooden battlement which then surrounded the tops. As it was now intended to come to what was termed "close battle," there was no more manoeuvring; and all the adverse ships bore down upon each other, firing their cannon briskly; while arquebusses, pistolettes and calivers, with many a shaft from bow and arblast were levelled from the tops, the poops, and forecastles--for the brilliant moon enabled aim to be taken with precision; and as the wind was again becoming light, the courses were drawn up, and all reduced their sails.

"Stand by with the grappling irons," cried Barton, whose bright armour and conspicuous figure made him the mark of many a missile; and in obedience to his order a number of bold fellows leaped into the chain-plates to threw them on board the foe, the moment the vessels came near enough. The sides of the English ships were similarly supplied. These grappling-irons were composed of five or six branches, bent round and pointed, with a ring at the root, to which is fastened a rope to hold on by when the grapple is thrown and catches the object. Thus they closed in upon each other--these six hostile ships; the two Scots running (as our annals relate) right in between the four English; the left centre ship being the _Harry_. All were pouring their missiles upon each other with fearful rapidity, and the English were so reckless that their shot must have killed many of their own men, after piercing the Scottish hulls. By some mismanagement, the _Harry's_ spritsail-yard became entangled with the main-shrouds of the _Yellow Frigate_, which forged a little a-head, and dragging round the _Harry_ with her, by one broadside she swept her deck like a tempest, and breached to ruin the towering poop beyond.

"Half-an-hour of a true parabolic speculum were worth a year of this work!" said Father Zuill, who now appeared in a coat of mail, with a poleaxe which he handled as well as ever he had done his rosary.

"Boarders, away fore and aft!" cried Sir Andrew Wood, through his trumpet, as he stood above the clouds of smoke at the edge of the poop, towering like an iron statue, while the chain-plates crashed as the ponderous hulls sheered alongside of each other in rasping collision; and in hundreds the boarders swarmed on the bulwarks, while the English grappling-irons clutched the Scottish ships, whose sailors worked side by side with the foe, in lashing the shrouds together below and the yard-arms aloft, until the six vessels formed, as it were, one broad platform, for a scene of melancholy butchery, which we have but little heart and less taste for describing.

The Scottish mariners, armed with their two-handed swords and Jedwood axes, and all accoutred in steel caps and jacks or doublets of escaupill, led by Sir Andrew Wood on one side, poured from the bows and sprit-sail yard of the _Yellow Frigate_ upon the decks of the _Harry_, and drove the enemy across the forecastle and along the larboard gangway, while Barton, sheathed in full armour and wielding a deadly ghisarma in both hands, led another band through the fire, smoke, and infernal uproar, hewing a passage, hilt to hilt, to the forecastle of the other ship, desperately forcing a passage through a hedge of gallant billmen, into the waist.

The crew of the _Queen Margaret_, under Sir Alexander Mathieson, after succeeding in repelling the English boarders, were similarly employed elsewhere; and there, under that placid summer moon, were Englishmen and Scot fighting like tigers, all mingled in a wild _melée_, while their firmly-grappled ships were committed to the mercy of the waves and currents. Save the flash and boom of a cannon or saker from the poops, or the bang of a pistolette or arquebuse from the tops, there were no other sounds heard now, but the rasp of steel gleaming on steel, the twang of the English bows, and the crash of the Scottish axes oh helmets and bills; the cries and shrieks of the wounded, and the yells of pain and defiance, drowned in a gurgle, as many a man was driven, fighting, overboard, and drowned or crushed to death between the grappled ships. The decks were encumbered by killed and wounded, and repeatedly the Scots were driven back over their own bulwarks, and had to fight the English on the decks of Wood and Mathieson.

"St Andrew! St. Andrew! A Wood! a Wood!" on one side, were met by "St. George for England!" on the other, mingled with many a furious epithet and ferocious expression of that deep-rooted national animosity, which the infamous wars of the Plantagenets had created between two nations, who, if allied, might then--as they have since--defied the world in arms.

Overhead the arquebussiers blazed at each other from the tops, and sent an occasional bullet into the mass of combatants below.

After various turns of the conflict, Robert Barton found himself fighting hand to hand with the crew of the _Harry_, close to her poop, and attended only by Willie Wad and a few seamen. With these he strove to join the Admiral, who had already penetrated into the vessel _beyond_, and was maintaining a desperate and most unequal conflict with her crew.

While Barton fought his way up the starboard side of the _Harry's_ deck, his boatswain, with a band of Jedwood axes, hewed a passage along the larboard, and, owing to the heavier weapons, and perhaps greater number of the Scots, the _Harry's_ crew were driven into the poop, where they hewed and shot in the dark: thus many a brave man perished by the hands of his own shipmates. Here Barton, when just at the poop door, encountered a gallant English gentleman, who had repeatedly cut a passage through the frigate's men, by knocking them down like ninepins; and, recognising Howard by the heraldic cognizance on his surcoat, the Scottish captain uttered a cry of triumph, and rushed upon him, to revenge Lord Howard's recent victory in the Downs; and then forgetting all but their personal animosity, they engaged hand to hand with sword and dagger, at every blow and cut making the sparks fly from their coats of tempered steel; and thrice during the conflict old Anthony Arblaster wound up his weapon, and sent a deliberate shot at Barton's head, and was preparing a fourth when a blow from an axe ended the poor man's shooting for ever.

"Haloo, auld junk," cried his slayer, "may I drink bilge, but thou'rt fitted for foreign parts at last! and by St. Andrew, gaffer Englishman," he added, turning upon Howard, "I'll cloure thy harnpan too, double caulked wi' wadding and sheathed wi' steel though it be!"

The short squat gunner was rushing on with uplifted axe, when Barton threw himself forward, and on his own sword caught the descending blow.

"Sheer off, Wad, sheer off, this man is mine, and I must slay him myself, were it but to soothe my slaughtered father's soul; so leave us, I command you!"

Wad soon found another antagonist in tall Dick Selby, who gave him more than enough to do. Meanwhile the combat continued between Howard and Barton, till a passing bullet broke the sword of the latter, and he stood disarmed and at the mercy of Howard, who merely uttered a bitter laugh and scornfully dropped the point of his sword, saying,--

"How now, my bonny Scot; wilt beg thy life at an English hand?"

"I could beg it of none more noble than Howard's; but strike, if you will, for never will I beg life or quarter of a living man, and least of all from the brother of him who slew my father!" cried Barton, hoarsely.

At that moment Wad returned with an armed tide of seamen flushed with blood and victory; the noble Howard was beaten to the deck, and, despite all Barton's efforts, would have been slain, had not the cry of a woman been heard, and Margaret Drummond, fearless of the surrounding carnage, the whistling shafts, the ferocious visages, and uplifted steel, threw herself on her knees beside him, and spread her white arms over him in protection.

The terror she had experienced in the cockpit was so great, that, regardless of the hideous grating and crashing below and the awful tumult above, she resolved to make an effort to reach the Scottish ships, which, as little Will Selby had informed her, were lashed alongside. Thus had she come so opportunely--and thus, with these two acts of mercy, will we gladly veil the horrors of this midnight conflict.

The Scottish seamen, who knew her not, and deemed she was the wife of Howard, drew back and spared him at once; for none are more merciful, albeit their roughness, than those honest souls who live by salt water; but Barton was confounded, and gazed upon her in astonishment and silence, while the din of battle died away around them, and it became known that the English ships had hauled down their colours. So thanks to the bravery of Sir Andrew Wood, old Sir Alexander Mathieson, "the King of the Sea," David Falconer, and a certain valiant mariner of Leith, named William Merrimonth, sailing master of the _Margaret_, who received a desperate wound, "ye foure Inglish shippes were takin," and all their crews disarmed, according to the records of the Scottish Admiralty, after a deadlier conflict than these waters had witnessed since the Knight of Dalhousie fought King Edward's fleet at Tweedmouth and sunk eighteen of his galleys.