If the lesson was late, it was the more thorough. Attacked on
both sides and hopelessly outnumbered, the Spaniards, who had
never doubted that this little craft was a merchant-ship, were cut
off to the last man. It was no fight, but a butchery. In vain
the survivors ran screaming prayers to the saints and threw
themselves down into the galley alongside. It also had been
riddled with arrows from the poop of the Basilisk, and both the
crew on the deck and the galley-slaves in the outriggers at either
side lay dead in rows under the overwhelming shower from above.
From stem to rudder every foot of her was furred with arrows. It
was but a floating coffin piled with dead and dying men, which
wallowed in the waves behind them as the Basilisk lurched onward
and left her in the fog.
In their first rush on to the Basilisk, the Spaniards had seized
six of the crew and four unarmed archers. Their throats had been
cut and their bodies tossed overboard. Now the Spaniards who
littered the deck, wounded and dead, were thrust over the side in
the same fashion. One ran down into the hold and had to be hunted
and killed squealing under the blows like a rat in the darkness.
Within half an hour no sign was left of this grim meeting in the
fog save for the crimson splashes upon bulwarks and deck. The
archers, flushed and merry, were unstringing their bows once more,
for in spite of the water glue the damp air took the strength from
the cords.
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