Sail had
been lowered by slashing away the ropes that held the yards. The
advance guard of boarders, a hundred strong, was ordered to the
poop, and his grapnel-men were posted, and prompt to obey his
command at the very moment of impact. As a result, the foundering
Arabella was literally kept afloat by the half-dozen grapnels that
in an instant moored her firmly to the Victorieuse.
Willoughby and van der Kuylen on the poop had watched in breathless
amazement the speed and precision with which Blood and his desperate
crew had gone to work. And now he came racing up, his bugler
sounding the charge, the main host of the buccaneers following him,
whilst the vanguard, led by the gunner Ogle, who had been driven
from his guns by water in the gun-deck, leapt shouting to the prow
of the Victorieuse, to whose level the high poop of the water-logged
Arabella had sunk. Led now by Blood himself, they launched
themselves upon the French like hounds upon the stag they have
brought to bay. After them went others, until all had gone, and
none but Willoughby and the Dutchman were left to watch the fight
from the quarter-deck of the abandoned Arabella.
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