Meanwhile, the gun–crews were busy with the sakers from the Atrevida. Water–tubs had been emptied over them, and now with swabs and wads and rammers at work the reloading was proceeding.
The Captain–General, idle amid this terrific activity, required presently to know why powder was so ineffectively being wasted by these pop–guns, when in the earthworks there were cannon of long range which might be hammering the Spaniards with twenty–four and thirty–pound shot. When he was answered evasively, he passed from suggestion to command, whereupon he was invited not to interfere with carefully laid plans.
An altercation was saved by the return of the Spaniards to the attack and a repetition of all that had gone before. Again the fort was smashed and pounded, and this time two Negroes were killed and a half–dozen buccaneers were injured by flying masonry, despite Blood's precaution to get them out of the place before the broadsides came.
When the second attack had been beaten off and the Spaniards were again retiring to reload, Blood resolved to withdraw the guns from a fort in which another half–dozen broadsides might completely bury them. Negroes and buccaneers and men of the Antiguan militia were indiscriminately employed on the business and harnessed to the guns. Even so it took an hour to get them all clear of the rubble and emplaced anew on the landward side of the fort, where Ogle and his men proceeded once more to load and carefully to lay them. The body of the fort meanwhile served to screen the operation from the Spaniards as they sailed in for the third time. Now the English held their fire whilst another storm of metal crashed upon those battered but empty ramparts. When it was over, the fort was a shapeless heap of rubble, and the little army lying concealed behind the ruins heard the Spanish cheer that announced their conviction that all was done, since no single shot had been fired to answer their bombardment.
Proudly, confidently, Don Miguel came on. No need now to stand off to reload. Already the afternoon was well advanced and he would house his men in Saint John's before nightfall. The haze of dust and smoke, whilst serving to screen the defenders and their new emplacements from the sight of the enemy, could yet be penetrated at close quarters by the watchful eyes of the buccaneers. The Virgen del Pilar was within five hundred yards of the harbour's mouth, when six sakers, charged now with langrel, chain, and cross–bar, swept her decks with murderous effect and some damage to her shrouds. Six faucons, similarly charged, followed after a moment's pause, and, if their fire was less effective, it yet served to increase the confusion and the alarm of so unexpected an attack.
In the pause they could hear the blare of a trumpet aboard the Virgen, screeching the Admiral's orders to the other ships of his squadron. Then, as in the haste of their manoeuvre to go about, the Spaniards yawed a moment, broadside on, Blood gave the signal, and two by two the remaining sakers sent their five–pound round shot in search of Spanish timbers. Odd ones took effect, and one very fortunate cannon–ball smashed the mainmast of one of the frigates. In her crippled state and the desperate haste resulting from it, she fouled the sloop, and before the two vessels could disentangle themselves and follow the retreat of the others, their decks had been raked again and again by langrel and cross–bar from water–cooled and hurriedly reloaded guns.
Blood, who had been crouching with the rest, stood up at last as the firing ceased, its work temporarily accomplished. He looked into the long, solemn face of Colonel Courtney, and laughed.
«Faith! It's another slaughter of the innocents, so it is.»
The Captain–General smiled sourly back at him. «If you had done as I desired you …»
Blood interrupted without ceremony. «On my soul, now! Are ye not content? If I'd done as you desired me, I'd have put all my cards on the table by now. It's saving my trumps I am until the Admiral plays as I want him to.»
«And if the Admiral doesn't, Captain Blood?»
«He will, for one thing because it's in the nature of him; for another because there's no other way to play at all. And so ye may go home and sleep in peace, placing your trust in Providence and me.»
«I do not care for the association, sir,» said the Governor frostily.
«But ye will. On my soul, ye will. For we do fine things when we work together, Providence and I.»
An hour before sunset the Spaniards were hove to a couple of miles out at sea, and becalmed. The Antiguans, white and black, dismissed by Blood, went home to sup, all but some two score whom he retained for emergencies. Then his buccaneers sat down under the sky to a generous supply of meat and a limited amount of rum.
The sun went down into the jade waters of the Caribbean, and darkness followed almost as upon the extinction of a lamp, the soft, purple darkness of a moonless night irradiated by a myriad stars.
Captain Blood stood up and nosed the air. The north–westerly breeze, which had died down towards evening, was springing up again. He ordered all fires and lights to be extinguished, so as to encourage that for which he hoped.
Out at sea in the fine cabin of the Virgen del Pilar, the proud, noble, brave, incompetent Admiral of the Caribbean held a council of war which was no council; for he had summoned his captains merely so that he might impose his will upon them. At dead midnight, by when all in Saint John's should be asleep, in the conviction that no further attack would come until morning, they would creep past the fort under cover of darkness and with all lights extinguished. Daylight should find them at anchor a mile or more beyond it, in the bay, with their guns trained upon the town. That must be checkmate to the Antiguans.
Upon this they acted, and with sails trimmed to the favouring breeze, and shortened so as to lessen the gurgle of water at their prows, they nosed gently forward through the velvety gloom. With the Virgen leading, they reached the entrance of the harbour and the darker waters between the shadowy bluffs on either side. Here all was deathly still. Not a light showed save the distant phosphorescent line where the waters met the shore; not a sound disturbed the stillness save the silken rustle of the sea against their sides. Already within two hundred yards of the fort, and of the spot where the Atrevida had been sunk to block the channel, the Virgen crept on, her bulwarks lined with silent, watchful men, Don Miguel, leaning immovable as a statue upon the poop–rail. He was abreast of the fort and counting the victory already won, when suddenly his keel grated, and, grating ever harder, drove shuddering onwards for some yards, to be finally gripped and held as if by some monstrous hand in the depths below, whilst overhead under pressure of a wind to which the vessel no longer yielded, the sails drummed loudly to an accompaniment of groaning cordage and clattering blocks.
And then, before the Admiral could even conjecture what had happened to him, the gloom to larboard was split by flame, the silence smashed by a roar of guns, the rending of timbers, and the crashing fall of spars, as the demi–cannons landed from the Arabella and held in reserve until now in the dissembled earthworks, hurled their thirty–two–pound shot into the Spanish flagship at merciless short range. The deadly accuracy of these guns might have revealed to Colonel Courtney precisely why Captain Blood had elected to sink the Atrevida by gunfire, instead of scuttling her. Thus he had obtained the exact range which enabled him to fire so accurately through the darkness. One frantic, wildly aimed broadside the Virgen discharged in answer before, smashed and riddled and held above water only by the hulk on which she had stuck fast, the Admiral abandoned her. With his survivors he clambered aboard one of the frigates, the Indiana, which, unable to check her way in time, had crashed into him astern. Moving very slowly, the Indiana had suffered little damage beyond a smashed bowsprit, and her captain, acting promptly, had taken in what little sail he carried.