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One day
towards the end of May, when the heat was beginning to grow
oppressive, there crawled into Carlisle Bay a wounded, battered
English ship, the Pride of Devon, her freeboard scarred and broken,
her coach a gaping wreck, her mizzen so shot away that only a jagged
stump remained to tell the place where it had stood. She had been
in action off Martinique with two Spanish treasure ships, and
although her captain swore that the Spaniards had beset him without
provocation, it is difficult to avoid a suspicion that the encounter
had been brought about quite otherwise. One of the Spaniards had
fled from the combat, and if the Pride of Devon had not given chase
it was probably because she was by then in no case to do so. The
other had been sunk, but not before the English ship had transferred
to her own hold a good deal of the treasure aboard the Spaniard.
It was, in fact, one of those piratical affrays which were a
perpetual source of trouble between the courts of St. James's and
the Escurial, complaints emanating now from one and now from the
other side.


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