Page 176 (1/1)

The Black Prince, with the Lion, the Grace Marie and four other ships had swept round to turn the Spanish flank; but the movement was seen, and the Spaniards had ten ships hich to o di Co and strove desperately to board her, but her side was so high and the defense so desperate that his et beyond her bulwarks but were hurled down again and again with a clang and clash to the deck beneath Her side bristled with crossbowht down on to the packed waist of the Lion, so that the dead lay there in heaps But the iant in the tops, who crouched so that none could see hie lump of iron between his hands, hurled it doith such force that nothing would stop it Again and again these ponderous bolts crashed through the deck and hurtled down into the botto all that came in their way

The Prince, clad in that dark ar the attack from the poop when the shipman rushed wildly up to him with fear on his face

"Sire!" he cried "The ship ainst these blows A few more will sink her! Already the water floods inboard"

The Prince looked up, and as he did so the shaggy beard showed once , whizzing down, beat a gaping hole in the deck, and fell rending and riving into the hold below The rizzled hair

"Another leak!" he cried "I pray to Saint Leonard to bear us up this day! Twenty ofwith buckets, but the water rises on them fast The vessel may not float another hour"

The Prince had snatched a crossbow from one of his attendants and leveled it at the Spaniard's tops At the very instant when the seaman stood erect with a fresh bar in his hands, the bolt took him full in the face, and his body fell forward over the parapet, hanging there head doard A howl of exultation burst froer from the Spaniards A seaman had run from the Lion's hold and whispered in the ear of the shipman He turned an ashen face upon the Prince