# Two Strong Men

   The armies of Hideyoshi, the Japanese dictator, are sweeping over Korea, and Kurushima, Lord of Tosa, leads the great fleet, carrying the medieval hosts on to the conquest of China. But one boat still stands in their path—and such a boat as the Japanese have never seen.
Two Strong Men A Complete Novelette
by Farnham Bishop and Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur
Authors of “Malena,” “With Sharp Sword-Edges," etc.
CROWDED with warriors in the fantastic armor of medieval Japan, a long line of junks and sampans rounded the southwest tip of the Korean peninsula, and headed north along the deserted coast of that war-tortured country, so inappropriately called the “Land of the Morning Calm.” Sent forth upon the seas by the edict of Hideyoshi, the Cæsar of Japan—who, like his Roman prototype, was uncrowned king of a conquering empire—they bore eager reenforcements to the hundred and ninety thousand veterans who were crashing through the rotten framework of the Korean kingdom as a stone crashes through a paper lantern.
Hideyoshi’s land campaigns were drawing to a triumphant close; there remained only to debark these reeinforcements for Konishi’s army, which was holding the new-captured city of Pyeng-yang. It was the Summer of 1592; before Autumn, Hideyoshi would have the peninsula safe behind him, as a base and source of supplies for his intended conquest of China.
Kurushima, Daimio or Lord of Tosa, led the fleet with a picked squadron manned by his own hardy fishermen—veteran sea-fighters, every man. Their long, rakish craft, mere open rowboats though they were, were known and feared from Luzon to the China coast. The largest foe that sailed the seas shrank from encountering them; pulling alongside, they would board and carry all before them with the trenchant edges of their terrible swords.
Once at Pyeng-yang, they would land and join in the dash on Nanking, with which the conquest of China was to begin. Kurushima’s stern soul yearned for the wind to bear them thither, where there waited adventuring enough even for his ardent spirit. There would be huge armies to overthrow, great cities to storm, the vastest kingdom in the world to seize and rule. As for the Koreans—they were to him as the crushed oyster-shells that paved the road to his castle-gate. He was composing a verse on this thought, when a startled cry from the helmsman wiped it from his mind. His alert eyes focused on the sea ahead.
From behind the lee of Han-San Island shot such a thing as the world had never yet seen. It was manifestly a ship—but what a ship! The Japanese stared as at some incredible monster. She was covered with an iron roof; a curved deck of iron plates shaped like the back of a tortoise. There was neither sail nor mast; beneath the protecting overhang of the iron deck the oars of many rowers urged her forward at stupefying speed. A hideous dragon’s head, with wide-open jaws, glared horribly above the bows. A raised oar in the stern bore the flaming standard of Admiral Yi Sun-sin, the great sea-fighter and inventor of Korea.
As the Japanese gazed with open eyes and mouths, the dragon’s jaws spat smoke and flame, and a heavy cannon-ball tore through the crowded waist of one of Kurushima’s junks. The shrieks of the wound ed rang piteously; but through and above them beat a thunderous yell of defiance from the whole Japanese fleet. Tall, narrow banners, bright with the insignia of a hundred fighting feudal chiefs, were waved on high. From junks and sampans swords, spears and halberds glistened in the sun. The archers of Japan bent their seven-foot bows, and a storm of burning fire-arrows flew through the air.
But the thick shafts flew in vain, for they only rebounded from the tortoise-boat’s iron deck, and fell hissing into the sea. Matchlock-men fired their shot, but the balls glanced from the Korean’s iron plates with a sound like that of hail-stones on a metal roof.
“If we, too, had cannon—” cried Kurushima’s helmsman; but the Daimio cut him short.
“Why should we use the weapons of cowards?” he exclaimed. “We have not needed them on the land, why on the sea? ‘The sword is the soul of the Samurai.’”
It was his favorite proverb; and now he and his men, in open boats, were ready to put their trust in the sword, even against an ironclad.
By this time the monster was right among them. Besides the dragon-mouth forward, there were six similar embrasures on each side, and another aft. Burning to come to hand-grips, the Japanese pressed up in their swarming open boats, striving to close and board. But one after another, they were shattered by crashing broad sides. Between broadsides, while the Korean gun-crews rammed home fresh charges, the bowmen beside them shot fire-arrows into the crowded vessels of Japan. The wooden hulls caught fire easily, and several were soon ablaze.
An abortive cheer rang out as one daring sampan, carrying a company of eager men-at-arms, pulled squarely athwart the tortoise-boat’s bows. But the cheer died as the Korean’s long, sharp ram cut her in two as if the sampan had been a straw, spilling her swordsmen into the sea. With unchecked speed, the ironclad passed over the swirl where her brave enemy had been, brained the struggling swimmers with her swinging oars, and rammed the largest junk in the Japanese fleet. Her side crushed in at the water-line, the junk heeled over, filled and went down with all on board, as the tortoise-boat backed away and started for a fresh victim.
Through the length of the entire fleet the ironclad tore her way, mangling helpless sampans with her terrible beak, sinking great junks with the fearful balls from her well-directed cannon. With frantic courage, the Japanese bore in, hoping against hope for a chance to board and avenge their butchered comrades. But all was in vain. The tortoise forced a path through them all, and sped on toward the south, as if sated with destruction.
Undaunted, her surviving enemies put about, doubling on their former course, and hastened to pursue their now fleeing foe. Soon the Japanese squadron was strung out in a long, scattering line ahead, as the speedier of them outdistanced their laboring fellows. But not even the swiftest held its own with the tortoise-boat, whose well-modeled racing hull beneath the over hanging gun-deck gave the lie to her name. On they pressed, pursuers and pursued, oars churning the water white; till the Japanese line was punctured with great gaps.
Suddenly the ironclad’s speed slackened, her oars trailed idly. With loud shouts of “Banzai!” the leading Japanese bore down upon her. When barely two ship’s lengths separated them, the Korean oars struck the water again; but with a difference. Admiral Yi Sun-sin had built his vessel alike at both ends; he had ordered his rowers to face about, and what had been the stern of the tortoise-boat was now her bow. Hardly had his nonplused pursuers realized the maneuver, when the ironclad, tearing toward them with growing speed, rammed and sank the foremost sampan, and came back down the line of her widely scattered adversaries, striking, backing and striking again.
It was too much. Crying that this sea-monster was the work of gods or demons, but not of men, the crews of several ships hurled their useless weapons into the sea. Some, fleeing swiftly, were fortunate enough to reach the shore, where they beached and set fire to their vessels to save them from the victorious Koreans. But most of them were slain, fighting or fleeing, so that the chroniclers of that day have declared the sea was red with their blood.
But Kurushima did not flee. Inwardly raging, but steady and skilful as in victory, he took upon himself the horror of Japan. Handling his own long, open boat smartly, he offered his broadside to the enemy’s ram, swung ’round as it came on, and brought her right under the overhang of the ironclad’s starboard beam. With a joyous yell, the men of Tosa swarmed up on the turtle’s back, lusting to flesh their heavy swords. But their fierce cries soon changed to shrieks of agony, for the curved iron deck was studded thickly with sharp spikes and spear-heads, on which the helpless boarders were impaled.
Kurushima alone was luckier. Leaping up at an open port, he succeeded in grasping one of the great gilded fangs in the lower jaw of the dragon’s mouth before his own boat was left behind. Pulling himself up with his left hand, he took the sword from between his teeth and delivered a mighty overhand blow at a dimly seen form inside the port. He had the joy of feeling his blade shear through flesh and bone and seeing it come back dripping. Then the reloaded gun was run out through the port; the lower lip of its muzzle struck the Daimio squarely on his helmeted forehead and knocked him senseless into the sea.
KURUSHIMA’S eyelids fluttered twice, and opened wide. He felt weak and faint. His fingers found the sleeping-mat on which he lay; his eyes saw, but did not comprehend the pine-tree which sheltered him, and the six-foot fence of canvas raised about the tree on spears thrust upright into the ground. For a time his brain did not grasp the meaning of these things; then, memory and understanding dawning in his mind, he ground his teeth in humiliated pride.
The savage, hopeless battle against the tortoise-boat; the crunch of the monster’s ram against the ribs of his doomed ships; the overwhelming defeat; his own desperate, futile attempt to snatch victory from the teeth of destruction, and the crashing blow that had flung him into oblivion—all came back upon him now, with accumulated bitterness. Japan had relied upon him, and he had failed her! Now he lay here, rescued he knew not how, cared for by folk he had not seen, but alive, alive, when he should have died with his brave sailors!
There was only one course for a beaten soldier, a dishonored Samurai. With hands that would scarcely obey the command of his brain, he fumbled for his dagger, fixed in the resolution to commit hari-kari, that he might not live continually reproaching himself for the stain of his defeat.
But at the sound of his first feeble stirring, a little man in a gray kimono stepped from behind the pine. He was short, this man, even for a Japanese; barely five feet tall, and as slightly built as a child. His face was that of an incredibly old and wrinkled monkey; but the eyes which burned in it were those of a god. Whoso met their glance knew himself in the presence of his master. Kurushima started violently, and turned his face away. It was Hideyoshi himself, the all-conquering dictator of Japan.
Reading the Daimio’s intention, as he was wont to read the minds of men, Hideyoshi raised two fingers in a gesture of restraint.
“You shall not slay yourself, Kurushima,” he commanded. “You are to kill the crew of the tortoise-boat instead, and sink their iron monster in the sea.”
“But how?” gasped the astonished Kurushima. “How can I do this, when I have already failed?”
“By returning to your province of Tosa and playing go in your castle at Urado,” Hideyoshi replied enigmatically, and sat on the floor beside the sleeping-mat. “Do not try to rise, for the fever has scarce left you. It is a fortnight since you were brought here. One of your sailors kept you afloat in spite of all your armor, and drew you to a piece of floating wreckage, whence you were taken into the ship of Miyosi of Izumo. That is how you were saved, and this is how you may serve Japan:
“We must have a great, strong ship, carrying heavy guns, to sink the tortoise-boat; otherwise the war can not go forward. We build no such vessels of our own. I have tried to buy two from the Portuguese in Macao, but they will not sell. Only one other source remains.
“Every year, at this time or a little later, a huge ship like a castle in the sea sails northward past the coast of Tosa. This ship comes from Manila, richly laden, and goes to another Spanish city called Acapulco. The Spaniards in Manila have many such vessels; but their king, fearing lest they grow too rich, lets them send only one a year. Five years ago a tempest drove one of those Spanish ships into your port of Urado.”
Kurushima nodded, his despair forgotten in eager attention.
“She tarried for a week,” he affirmed, “filling her water-casks and waiting for the wind to moderate, for it was a very great storm.”
“This year’s ship,” said Hideyoshi, tapping his finger-tips together to emphasize his words, “will come to Urado, whether there is a storm or not.”
Kurushima was too polite to look incredulous; but the dictator sensed his doubts and thought it best to dispel them.
“There are many Japanese in Manila, and they tell me much,” Hideyoshi explained graciously. “One of them, a Christian named Ichio, sails with this year’s ship. Her course from Manila lies through many islands, where the Christian priests and their converts wait for her coming and row out to her, bearing gifts of fresh meat and fruit. To certain ones of these converts on the nearer islands I have already sent orders which they will repeat to Ichio when the ship arrives.
“Now Ichio is keeper of the water-casks aboard her. Off the coast of Tosa he will report, quite truthfully, to his captain that the casks are leaky and nearly empty, and he will praise the spring that flows under the wisterias above your beach. The ship’s captain will have no choice but to put into Urado, if he would keep his crew from perishing of thirst.
“Then you must get possession of the ship. If possible, do so without violence; for I do not wish to begin another war till this one is finished. If you give the Spaniards a fair opportunity, they may give up without a struggle. The Spaniards in Manila are few and fear us greatly; they are merchants, loving gain and hating to fight. Probably you can bribe the captain to sell the ship; Ichio has been told to study his weaknesses and report them to you.
“Remember, if it comes to fighting, that the ship is to be captured, so far as possible, without injury. Her crew are of no importance, except the sailing-master and the gunners. These you will try to take alive.
“The hulls of these Manila ships are of teak, thick enough to withstand stone or iron shot from the heaviest cannon in all Japan or Korea. That is why I wish for one to fight the tortoise-boat. If you succeed, you shall take the great ship into battle for the conquest of China. Nevertheless, stout as she is, I forbid you to use either cannon or fire-arrows when you capture her, lest mischance occur.”
“We of Tosa despise such cowards’ tools,” Kurushima answered scornfully. “The brave man knows no weapon but the sword.”
With a smile that beautified his wrinkled face, Hideyoshi reached within the folds of his kimono, and handed to Kurushima the Daimio’s own beloved blade. At the familiar feel of the sharkskin grip, tears burst from Kurushima’s eyes, and a great flood of health and strength poured through his fever-wasted veins.
“Even the Sea-God failed to wrest it from your grasp,” said the dictator. “May you die with it in your hand!”
“WHAT manner of man, then, is this captain of yours?” demanded Kurushima crisply.
Through a loophole in the wall of his castle he could see the great Manila galleon San Gregorio riding at anchor in Urado Bay. The flaming banner of Spain flew from her lofty poop, and beneath it sparkled the blue gleam of Western armor.
Ichio, the mask-faced secret agent of Hideyoshi, looked at the fighting eye and panther-like body of the Daimio—now fully recovered from the effects of his fever—and replied—
“Oh Lord of Tosa, he is even such a man as yourself!”
“What, Christian dog!” cried the angry Daimio, his eyes flashing terribly. “Do you compare this barbarian, this sea-merchant, with one of the honorable class of Samurai?”
“Forgive my heedless tongue, most mighty lord!” wailed Ichio, his forehead scraping the matting and the back of his neck tickling with apprehension. “I mean that he is no merchant, but a warrior—a caballero, which is to say, a Samurai of Spain. Born of the most ancient and impoverished house of de Torres, my captain, Don Diego, thinks never of gain, but always of honor. The Spaniards in his crew boast of the many battles he has fought with the English, the Moros and other pirates. So great is his skill and valor that he has never lost a ship entrusted to his care. And so wonderful is his honesty that, though he has had charge of whole cargoes of silver and gold, he is still poor.”
“There can be no question, then, of bribing such a man,” said Kurushima, with much satisfaction.
The idea had been utterly repugnant to his straightforward, hard-hitting nature; but Hideyoshi’s commands had been explicit. Now, however, the Daimio could go ahead after his own methods, with his conscience free.
Obedient to the dictator’s will, he had proceeded with the utmost caution. No sooner had the San Gregorio entered Urado harbor, early that morning, than he had seen to it that certain effective but unobtrusive methods had been taken to bar her exit. Moreover, out from the mist-shrouded shore had darted a dozen challenging guard-boats, crammed with picked swordsmen, ostensibly to demand the reason for the stranger’s intrusion. Had there been evidence of panic or unpreparedness on board the galleon, she would have been boarded and captured then and there.
But a culverin had roared from a lower-deck port, and an eighteen-pound solid shot struck the water so close to the bows of the leading guard-boat that the column of spray it raised fell on and drenched the startled rowers as they instinctively backed water. So there was a halt and a parley, in which Ichio served as interpreter. And when, as a result of that parley, the guard-boats withdrew and some of the galleon’s crew rowed ashore as the sun drank up the mist, to begin the all-day task of filling the water-casks, Ichio came with them and presently slipped away to the castle to make his report to the Daimio.
“It is true that Don Diego can not be bought with gold,” he said regretfully. “But he has one weakness: he is in love.
“On the last voyage from Acapulco to Manila, we had as passenger the Lady Ysabel, daughter of the Governor of the Philippines. Never, oh Lord of Tosa, have I seen so beautiful a maiden. All on board worshiped her—the very Lascars made verses in her praise, which the lookout sang as he walked in the bows at night. And from the high poop, Don Diego and the Lady Ysabel would look down together at the moonlight on the sea. Long before we reached Manila, we knew, from the way those two looked at each other, that they were in love.”
“What have this captain’s private affairs to do with me?” Kurushima inquired.
“This: there is in them a means for getting this ship into your hands, Most Mighty One.”
“Go on then,” the Daimio commanded.
“When we reached Manila,” the spy continued, “we found no fleet of trading-junks from China, as there should have been, with silks and porcelains for the. galleon’s return voyage to Acapulco. The fierce Moro pirates from Sulu had frightened them all away. Great was the clamor of the Manila merchants to the governor, who talked loudly but did nothing. It was a great calamity to all in Manila, for in the China trade lies all their wealth, and they live but for the fat profits from the sale of those goods in Acapulco.
“As soon as we had discharged our lading of Spanish goods and Mexican silver, Don Diego went to the governor and offered to sail the San Gregorio into the Sulu Sea, destroy the pirates, and re-open the China trade. This was a voluntary service on his part, for he is not an officer of the governor of the Philippines, but of the viceroy of Mexico. Overjoyed, the governor bade him name his own reward; and Don Diego asked for the hand of the Lady Ysabel. This was overheard by one of my comrades, a servant in the Palacio. Nothing is said or done in Manila that we servants of Japan do not know.
“Now there was in Manila a cunning rogue who called himself Don Feliz de Arruego, and who had grown rich by secret speculation in billetes. These billetes are pieces of paper, each entitling its bearer to ship the fourth part of a bale on the yearly galleon. They are distributed among the merchants of Manila, according to the wealth and standing of the merchant, and their value fluctuates greatly.”
“What do I know or care of merchants and their papers?” interrupted the impatient Kurushima. “What has this to do with capturing a ship?”
“Patience, oh Mighty One, and I will make all clear. “If anything occurs to prevent the yearly shipment to Acapulco, the billetes decline greatly in value, and the merchants face ruin. One day a fisherman, employed by this Feliz de Arruego, came to Manila with a most terrible tale. Blown by contrary winds into the Sulu Sea, he had there, so he declared, seen the San Gregorio grappled by a whole fleet of proas, and the fierce Moros swarming up her sides by hundreds. Then, so the fisherman swore, the galleon’s powder-magazine exploded, and she was blown to pieces with all on board.
“At this fearful news, all Manila was plunged into the deepest despair. There would be no shipment; the billetes were worthless; it was a terrible blow to the island trade.
“Deepest of all was the grief of the Lady Ysabel, many were her tears, and many the masses she had said for the repose of her lover’s soul.
“Then came another suitor for her hand: Don Feliz de Arruego. Going to the governor, he revealed the truth, which was that Don Diego was alive and returning victorious in the San Gregorio, with the heads of three pirate dattos hanging from the bowsprit, and a rich Chinese trading fleet astern. The governor cursed himself because, like all others in Manila, he had sold all his billetes when the false news had made them worthless.
Don Feliz assured him that there was none who had not done the same, and revealed himself as the purchaser. Therefore he was now the sole owner of the cargo-space in this year’s galleon, and was in consequence made fabulously rich by his own knavery and the valiant exploits of his rival. In consideration of his wealth, he asked the governor to let him marry the Lady Ysabel.”
“And did not the governor instantly order him to be crucified?” demanded the virtuously indignant Kurushima.
“No, for Don Feliz offered him a half-share in the profits. It was that or poverty for the governor, who had received by the San Gregorio unexpected orders to return at once to Spain. And, because he had been so eager to fight the pirates, Don Diego had not tarried for a formal, public betrothal to the Lady Ysabel, without which he had no guarantee of her father’s good faith. When he came back triumphant to Manila, he found her betrothed to Don Feliz de Arruego.
“And now, oh Lord of Tosa, they are all—Don Diego, the governor, Don Feliz, and the Lady Ysabel—returning to Acapulco in the San Gregorio out there in your harbor.”
“Then why,” exclaimed the Daimio, “when he has them all on his ship, does not this wronged and valiant captain cut the two knaves’ heads off and marry the maiden?”
“Doubtless he would do so if there were any place where he could go afterward; but there is not, for he could not return home, and he is too honorable a man to turn pirate. But if he were offered high rank in your service with his ship, oh Ruler of the Southern Sea, why should he not slay his enemies, and accept?”
“YOU do well to take precautions, Captain. Hidden among those houses are troops to the strength of half a tercia.”
So spoke pedantic little Lieutenant Pablo Gomez, as he stood on the quarter deck of the San Gregorio and studied the beautiful, mountain-girt shores of Urado Bay without a suspicion of their beauty. He was in command of the handful of time-expired infantrymen returning to Spain on the galleon; and his eye was that of a trained soldier—and nothing else.
But the tall man beside him was not looking at the land; his eyes were fixed on five small fishing-junks, moored close together in the fairway, just inside the entrance of the harbor.
“I am more concerned, Don Pablo, with those fishermen yonder. They have caught nothing all day, yet they remain in the same spot.”
“Why should those wretched smacks concern you more than a host of heathen soldiery?” asked Lieutenant Gomez, in wonder.
“It would be hard to make you understand why, Don Pablo,” replied Diego de Torres, smiling. “You are a soldier and I am a seaman.”
He was that rarest of sixteenth century types, a Spanish naval officer who knew and loved the sea. Born in a crumbling, spray-drenched castle on the craggy headland where for five centuries his ancestors had looked out over the Bay of Biscay, Don Diego had literally learned the taste of salt water in his cradle. The children of fishermen and smugglers had been his playmates; and later, his teachers had been the buccaneers of Holland, France and England, in the grim schools of the North Sea and the Caribbean.
Young as he was, he had commanded a ship in the Great Armada of 1588, and had been one of the few commanders to bring his vessel safely back to Spain. He had served with high distinction in the galleons of the Indian Guard before the viceroy of Mexico sent him to the Southern Seas.
Yet, in spite of his plebeian knowledge of sheets and braces, cross-staffs and astrolabes, no one could deny that Don Diego de Torres looked and bore himself like the caballero he was. His slender, shapely figure, in its perfectly fitting sheath of black and silver, was as straight and supple as the long rapier by his side, and as finely tempered. His handsome, delicately-featured face would have seemed that of an ineffectual dreamer to one who failed to notice the strong chin beneath the short, pointed beard, or who had never seen the light of battle glow in those dark, melancholy eyes.
Up the poop-ladder from the waist came a young girl, astonishingly beautiful. She was a Spanish blonde, blue-eyed and fair as any Englishwoman, but with all the grace and fire of the South. Perched on her wrist sat a small, gay-feathered Borneo parrot, which her father, the ex-governor, had bought for her on the assurance that it could “play tricks and talk like a Christian.”
“Has it spoken yet, Dona Ysabel?” asked Lieutenant Gomez, as he did at least ten times daily.
“Not yet, Don Pablo.”
A suspicious gleam of polished metal in one of the temple groves ashore caught the watchful lieutenant’s eye. The tide was ebbing, and the galleon lay head on to shore; Don Pablo bowed and went forward for a closer view.
For the first time since the galleon had cleared from Manila, Diego and Ysabel were alone together. Though he had longed to speak with her, to be near her, the caballero’s rigid sense of honor had forced him to maintain a formal distance between himself and the betrothed of another man. Burning with resentment at the trick that Don Feliz had played upon him, his heart tortured with hopeless love, he was man and gentleman enough to play the game as he understood it, cost him what it might. But now he was face to face with Ysabel herself; the blood throbbed in his temples, his stern face and tense lips showed the strain under which his self-control was laboring. Ysabel watched him with anxious, tender eyes.
Suddenly, before either of them could utter a word, a strange shrill voice spoke from the empty air between them.
“Diego!” it cried, softly and plaintively, as if its heart were breaking. “Diego of my soul, come back to me!”
“It is the bird,” said Diego, his voice under control, but his cheeks white beneath the sunburn. “It is the bird—I have heard the like in the West Indies.”
Ysabel trembled and caught at the poop rail for support. The parrot, shaken from her wrist, flew to the top of one of the great, heavily leaded stern lanterns, whence it cried again—
“Diego of my soul, come back to me!”
Through the open cabin skylight came the clink of glasses and a snatch of a drinking-song in a high-pitched, unpleasant voice—the voice of that successful speculator in billetes, Don Feliz de Arruego.
“No!” said Ysabel, her voice on edge with loathing, her features firm and resolved. “No! I will not go back to Spain and marry that beast down there!”
Diego’s heart leaped with a hope that he dared not acknowledge.
“You must not say this,” he cautioned her. “It can do no good.”
He knew that her greedy-souled father would hold her to the bargain, as by Spanish law he had every right to do. And he knew that the parrot was repeating what it had heard her cry out, over and over again in the night watches, innocent as she was of the terrible imitativeness of parrots. Henceforth the bird would cry it out all over the ship—and the voyage to Acapulco was five months long!
The cold sweat was standing out on Diego’s forehead. But Ysabel was smiling, radiant with happiness.
“Listen, Diego!” she cried softly, so that those in the cabin might not hear. “Listen! I have found a way!”
“No, no,” he protested. “I can not listen—you can not, in honor—oh, what can I say to make you understand? We must not think of that which has been—you are his betrothed!”
“His betrothed!” she breathed scornfully, her eyes twin points of blue flame. “His purchase, together with the bales of spices in the hold! Let him keep ship and merchandise—you and I will go ashore in this strange land and live there forevermore!”
“Ysabel! You would stay in Japan, a hostile and a heathen land! You would spend your life among barbarians to be with me?”
“But there are thousands of Christians in Japan, so Ichio of the water-casks has told me,” the girl replied; “and good priests from Portugal, who—” her voice sank to a whisper, but she finished bravely, with crimson cheeks—“who would marry us, Diego.”
Her lovely eyes looked up into his, her face was very near. Here, on this same corner of the poop where they now stood, he had first spoken to her, one moonlit night in mid-Pacific, of his great love. That love had filled his heart ever since, mastering him with its sweet madness, torturing him with its hopelessness, and now he felt it rise within him in a great, glad flood that swept away all doubts, all scruples.
Why should he give her up? She was his, his in spite of the vile trickster who had stolen her from him, but who had not won her heart. She loved him, Diego, loved him enough to give up home, friends, riches and live in exile, so she might only live with him! And why not? Why should they not land on that beautiful shore before him, and there live happily as long as life was theirs? He bent toward her, beside himself with her beauty, and stretched out his arms to take her to him.
But before he could put his thought into word or action, a loud challenging hail rang out from the forecastle:
“Boat ahoy! Keep off or we fire!”
Diego’s arms dropped to his side; .the madness swept from his brain by the urgency of duty, he turned to look out over the rail. A gorgeously painted barge, crowded with Japanese officials in strange ceremonial costumes, had put out from the shore and was approaching the anchored galleon.
“But it is the honorable ambassadors of the Lord Kurushima,” came the reply in Spanish and in the familiar voice of Ichio, “with a most weighty message to the valiant Captain Don Diego de Torres.”
“Bid the ambassadors come aboard,” Diego replied shortly.
His half-hostile reception when he entered the harbor, the massing of troops on shore, and the semi-piratical reputation of the Tosa coast, had caused him to stand on his guard and keep off all shore craft at a safe distance. He had wanted nothing better than to be left alone till he could complete the tedious task of refilling the water-casks and put out to sea.
But a formal embassy demanded formal and proper reception—even if he were not now thinking of making a welcome in Japan for himself and Ysabel.
“Lower away the starboard gangway, smartly, there!” Diego commanded. “Boatswain, lay aft with your sideboys, drummers and trumpeters. Lieutenant Gomez, your musketeers and pikemen will form a guard of honor. Have them present arms as the ambassadors come overside.”
Loud boomed the saluting guns; the trumpets sounded, the drummers beat a ruffle and the boatswain piped the ambassadors aboard. There were bows and greetings on both sides; the ambassadors, all men well past middle life, with gorgeously embroidered silk kimonos and oiled black top-knots, almost swept the decks with their foreheads; and the courteous Spaniards drew off their plumed caps with a stately flourish and a crooking of velvet knees.
Beautiful gifts of curiously carved ivory were brought forward by the ambassadors; boxes of perfumed sandalwood, inlaid bronze-lacquer caskets, and rich pieces of raw silk, were presented in token of the friendly esteem of the Daimio. In acknowledgment, Diego had his servants bring out food, and tall glasses of Spanish wine, of which his guests partook sparingly. He offered no gifts in return, for he knew that would have offended the ambassadors.
Ichio, maestro de los raciones de agua, proved himself also a master of the language and etiquette of both nations. After an hour’s hard work, he reached the point where he could deliver the Daimio’s urgent invitation to Captain Diego de Torres to visit him in his castle, and advise him how to combat the terrible tortoise-boat.
Diego’s somber eyes lit up with interest. Here was the very opening he was looking for; moreover, the description of the strange Korean warship which had inflicted disaster upon the fleet of Japan aroused his professional interest. So Diego went ashore with the highly pleased and very deferential ambassadors. By his own orders, none of his countrymen went with him; he wanted no witnesses to that which, might occur.
KURUSHIMA’S castle proved to be a huge rectangular enclosure of gray stone, hardly more than a crenelated wall twelve feet high, sloping outward in a massive escarpment, and provided with wide, strong gates and a moat. Passing through the south gate with his escort, between two fantastically-armored sentinels in black war-masks, Diego was ushered in between bowing functionaries, and discovered himself in a court containing half-a-dozen picturesque wooden buildings, richly finished and grotesquely carved. His guides led the way into the largest of these, and departed.
A powerfully built man with commanding eyes rose from a padded mat at the further end of the hall, and approached him, bowing low. Though no word was said, Diego recognized that he was in the presence of the Daimio, so obviously was this Japanese the master of the place. Ichio, entering behind his captain, confirmed his impression by prostrating himself with marked humility. Diego looked his host over with frank, though courteous curiosity. Kurushima was still young, plainly an athlete and a soldier. His gaze was lion-like and frank, his gestures those of a born leader of men.
After tea had been brought in and served, with much ceremony, in handleless cups of gay Chinese porcelain, the Daimio began to talk easily and fluently, Ichio translating with a mounting air of importance. Diego listened intently, without comment. As calmly as if he had been discussing an event of ancient history, Kurushima told the tale of the tortoise-boat, describing his own defeat in vivid, concise terms.
“And this is the ship,” he concluded at length, drawing a roll of stiffened silk from one capacious sleeve.
Seated upon a chest—the nearest approach to a chair in all Urado—Don Diego received the roll, unfolded it and gazed with great interest at a spirited painting of the tortoise-boat, drawn by Kurushima from memory. The Daimio was an artist of no mean ability, and had reproduced every detail of the monstrous craft with wonderful accuracy.
“A new type—a galley with broadside guns as well as bow-chasers!” exclaimed the Spaniard. “In that point it resembles the galleasses of Don John of Austria at Lepanto—but those were no true galleys, for they were ship-rigged as well as oared. I should like to see a squadron of these tortoise-boats built for the Mediterranean service, and sent against the rovers of the Barbary Coast.”
“This curved deck, Don Diego, is covered with plates of iron,” explained Ichio. “The Lord Kurushima wishes to know if you have ever heard of an iron-plated ship before?”
Diego nodded.
“When I was at the siege of Antwerp, the Hollanders sent against our blockading fleet a large galleon whose sides they had covered over, even to her cage-works, with plates of iron. They expected great things from this craft, and named her the Finis Belli, which signifies in Latin ‘The End of the War.’ But she steered badly, ran aground on a shoal, heeled over at low tide till she was helpless, and so was captured by the ship which I then had the honor to command.”
Swiftly Ichio translated this into Japanese, and presently put the Daimio’s next question into Spanish:
“Since you have captured one iron ship, Don Diego, could you not capture another? Could you fight the tortoise-boat with a galleon like the San Gregorio?”
“Yes, in the open sea. Galleys are good only in sheltered waters. With her overhanging topsides and narrow hull, this tortoise-boat would roll vilely in any sort of sea, so that good gunnery would be impossible. Her iron sheathing can not be more than quarter-inch plate; otherwise its weight, carried so high above the water-line, would capsize and sink her even in a calm. The San Gregorio’s culverins would smash her thin plating like glass.”
“How much does a galleon like the San Gregorio cost?”
“She was built at the Cavité shipyards, three years ago, for eight thousand pesos. Her guns and tackle cost as much more,” Diego replied.
“The honorable Daimio would buy her for sixty thousand pesos—more than three times what she was worth new,” said Ichio.
“I shall forward his Excellency’s most liberal offer to the viceroy at Mexico City,” Diego assured them, wondering where the Japanese could find a captain capable of commanding a Western war-galleon.
“And to you, oh Don Diego,” continued the interpreter, “he offers lands worth ten thousand koku a year, and the fair castle of Kobugara, to you and to your heirs forever, if you will stay and be his admiral.”
Diego’s face was unmoved, but his heart bounded within him. Here was the chance he had been hoping for, which he might even have been moved to suggest himself, had not the Japanese played into his hand. It was a princely offer. Should he accept it, then he could go back to the San Gregorio with a light heart, and return to shore with Dona Ysabel. Her father and Don Feliz would doubtless object, but what could they do? He himself was free to resign from the service of Philip of Spain; and Gil Robles, the mate, was fully competent to take the galleon back across the Pacific.
Moreover, from the moment he had entered the hall and looked into the Daimio’s frank young face and fearless eye, Diego had felt himself strongly attracted to Kurushima. Friendships had been few in Diego’s lonely life; here, he knew instinctively, was a man who would make him a strong and loyal friend. Unknown to Diego, the same thought was in Kurushima’s mind, as he sat on the cushioned mat and looked at his outland guest. Shrewd little Ichio glanced from one to the other, read their minds, and silently congratulated himself and his master, Hideyoshi.
“Tell the Lord Kurushima that I accept,” said Diego, rising, “for his service seems one in which a man may gain much honor. Now I must go to the ship and come back with a friend, before the galleon resumes her voyage to Acapulco. When she has returned to Japan* as my Lord Kurushima’s ship, then will I begin my duties as his admiral. Till then, I crave his hospitality lor myself and one other person now on board the San Gregorio.”
“Oh Don Diego!” Ichio entreated, “his Excellency wishes that you and whoever you may bring with you may be his guests for ten thousand years. But he says that he can not wait for the galleon to cross the great ocean and return. He must have her now, to sink the tortoise-boat as soon as possible, that Japan’s armies may cross the seas. Delay might mean the ruin of our enterprise! The honorable Daimio must take possession of the San Gregorio today!”
DIEGO tapped his foot upon the floor.
“That,” he answered calmly, “he can not do. I regret exceedingly that I am unable to dispose of his Majesty’s ship without authorization.”
“But, Don Diego,” protested the voluble Ichio, “the crew will do whatever you bid them—you have but to order them ashore. None of those on board will be injured or deprived of anything: the cargo will be placed under seal and guarded by its owners and the soldiers of Lieutenant Gomez, till another ship can come from Manila to take everything away. And the great price that the Lord Kurushima is paying for the ship will surely compensate for the delay to those in authority in Mexico and Spain.”
Diego knit his brows. Polite as the Daimio’s assurances were, he felt a veiled threat under their silkiness. The Japanese needed his vessel now; evidently they would not brook delay. Yet his honor would not permit him, an officer of the king, to be false to his trust, no matter what it might cost himself. And that it might cost much he knew, for he was familiar with the reputation of the Japanese.
And with that thought came realization. The quiet, but evident purpose of those fishing-smacks—the gleam of armor in the temple-groves; the guard-boats crammed with swordsmen! He understood it all now: the Daimio would not wait for a reply from Spain; if he could not get the San Gregorio peacefully, he would try what force could do! Diego’s stubborn heart hardened, and his reply was crisp.
“Be that as it may,” he said firmly, “I can not do this thing his Excellency asks of me, for I am not yet in the service of the Lord Kurushima. I am, until he is pleased to accept my resignation, an officer of his Most Catholic Majesty, the King of Spain. And until the sale of the galleon has been consummated, the San Gregorio is still the king’s ship, which I, who have the honor to command her, will defend against any whosoever will try to take her by force of arms. You will make this clear to the Lord Kurushima, and add that I have the honor to wish him a very good afternoon.”
And with a courtly bow, he turned and walked out of the audience hall, looking as unconcerned as if he were taking a stroll on the Prado. Inwardly, he was suffering all the tortures of the Inquisition. Before him rose the white, pleading face of Ysabel, doomed by his quixotic action to a hateful marriage, sacrificed to a pedantic point of honor. But, however willing he might be to stay with her in Japan, he could not steal the king’s ship. And what was her happiness or his, compared to the honor of Spain? Holding his head high, Diego passed on.
But when he came to the outer courtyard of the castle, he found the gateway barred by a score of Japanese pikemen with lowered points. Other men-at-arms guarded the stone steps leading to the platform where, in time of siege, archers could stand to shoot over the battlemented parapet of the castle wall.
Out of the door of the audience hall came Kurushima, attended by Ichio and an armed guard.
“The Daimio regrets, oh Don Diego!” cried the interpreter, “that he must detain you here till he has seized the San Gregorio. And he hopes that you may yet become his admiral, and serve him as faithfully as you have served the King of Spain!”
“Tell the Daimio,” answered Diego, looking swiftly about him, “that since he is coming to visit my ship, I must hasten aboard to prepare a welcome for him!”
Against the wall, hard by the castle gate, stood a wooden rack full of long, stout bamboo lances. Before any of the surprised Japanese could stop him, Diego had reached the rack and snatched out one of the fourteen-foot spears. Bringing it to the charge, he ran full-tilt across the gravel, not in the direction of the gate, but toward a long, blank stretch of the outer wall. Just as the spear-head seemed about to crash against the granite, Diego lowered and thrust it into the ground at the foot of the wall.
The butt of the shaft, with the man clinging to it, rose straight up into the air. Letting go of the lance, Diego dropped on his side on the broad platform of the wall, rose and dived headforemost through an embrasure into the deep waters of the castle moat.
A startled shout, half rage, half acclamation, went up from the astounded Japanese in the courtyard. A mounted retainer on the road outside reined up his horse at the sound, and at the sight of a dripping foreigner climbing out of the moat beside him. The horseman made the mistake of drawing up too close; just as he snatched out his sword, Diego was upon him. Putting one hand under the red-lacquered, shoe-like stirrup, the athletic Spaniard gave a great heave that lifted the other out of the saddle and dropped him, half-stunned and wholly bewildered, into the middle of the road. Before the retainer could scramble to his feet again, Diego had mounted and was galloping down the road to the shore.
Behind him, armed men were pouring in shouting hundreds out of the castle gate. Drums began to beat, conches sounded hoarsely; from both the thatch-roofed town on Diego’s right and the huge old Buddhist temple on his left erupted sudden streams' of men-at-arms. A matchlock roared; a flight of arrows whirred past the fugitive’s head, but the range was long and the target far from stationary. Bare legged peasants toiling in the wet paddy-fields looked up curiously at the hunted horseman, but made no attempt to stay him; farming was their trade, fighting their masters’.
Now the beach was very near. Drawn up on the sand like a Viking fleet were twenty or more great open row-boats, ready to be manned and pushed off. Diego thought of the flint and steel in his pouch; but there was no time to try burning the enemy’s boats—the pursuers were too close. Straight down the beach and into the water he rode the panting pony, till the saddle was awash.
“Saint James be praised!” cried Diego fervently.
Halfway between him and the anchored galleon was the San Gregorio’s long-boat, with a giant’s rosary of fresh-filled water-casks bobbing astern.
“Ho, Gil Robles, to me!”
Standing up in his stirrups, Diego shouted and waved his broad-brimmed felt hat with its dripping plume. The stocky figure in the stern of the long-boat looked ’round, waved back, whipped out a gleaming knife and cut the tow-rope.
“Even so, we have filled enough casks today to last us to the rain-belt of the upper latitudes,” thought Diego, as he threw away his hat and dived from the saddle. “Good man, Gil!”
’Round came the long-boat, starboard oars backing, port oars pulling, in a smother of foam and a crackling roar of Biscayan oaths from the mate. Diego swam swiftly out to meet it, his long rapier hampered him cruelly, but he would not part with it. He swam under water as much as possible, coming to the surface only for a hastily-snatched breath and diving again, for fear of arrows from the shore.
But no arrows fell. Looking back as he swam, Diego saw the beach a solid mass of excited Japanese soldiery, and, in the front rank, archers lowering their bent bows at the imperative gestures of Kurushima, on horseback and in full armor at the water’s edge.
“Heathen though he is,” thought the grateful Spaniard, “there breathes not in all Christendom a more gallant knight and gentleman than Lord Kurushima!”
THIRTY strokes more, and Gil Robles was helping him into the long-boat. Away they went for the San Gregorio, the boat’s crew pulling with every ounce they could throw into it, as they saw the swarming Japanese embark and push off from the shore.
Taking a deep breath into his aching lungs, Diego stood up in the stern-sheets and blew a long call on the silver whistle hung ’round his neck. Back shrilled an answer from the boatswain on the ship; the soldiers’ trumpeter sounded the call to arms.
Men swarmed up the galleon’s shrouds and lay out on the yards. ’Round creaked the windlass, as the huge hempen anchor-cable writhed in through the hawse-hole like a frightened snake. Foresail and main sail, huge single topsails—top-gallants and royals there were none—the little square spritsail under the high-steeved bowsprit and the tall, graceful lateen on the mizzen—all were set and the anchor apeak, as the long-boat shot ’round the San Gregorio’s bows and along her starboard side.
Now the off-shore breeze brought her head ’round and her port battery to bear on the approaching Japanese flotilla.
“Let them have it!” shouted Diego, as he came over the rail.
Already loaded and run out, the nine culverins on the gun-deck and the light pieces on the poop and forecastle thundered together. Before the dense cloud of sulfurous smoke had lifted, the galleon was running, with the wind on her starboard quarter, for the open sea.
“The saints be praised, the heathen are all slain!” cried a fat Manila silk-dealer, with pious fervor.
“Two boats sunk, one sinking, the rest coming on bravely,” corrected Diego, peering through the lifting powder-smoke astern. “How craftily they follow in our wake—we have not a gun to bear. Lay aft the musketeers! Bid the master-gunner shift two culverins to the stern-ports!”
“Why not round to, and give them another broadside?” asked Gil Robles.
“I dare not, in this narrow channel betwixt the inner haven and the sea,” replied the captain in a low voice. “Should we touch bottom, or the wind fail us before we reach open water, they will lay us aboard. And there are a thousand good fighting men in those craft, while we have less than three-score fit to bear arms.
“Gentlemen,” he added in a louder voice, to the anxiously listening passengers, “arm yourselves and report for duty at your appointed stations. Be of good cheer, for it may be given us this day to uphold the honor of Spain! Rig the waist-cloths, there! Send round-shot up to the tops and yards! Make ready the bases, minions and murderer-guns! Pikemen, stand by the rail! Carpenter, make hot the pitch! Lieutenant Gomez, the after-castle is your charge; Senor Robles, the forecastle is your station. I myself will hold the waist.”
High-built at stem and stern were the galleons of those days; the forecastle was indeed a castle set in the fore part of the ship, the poop was another fortress towering aft. The low waist lay like a valley between them; to raise its sides and make them harder for a foe to scale, strips of stout canvas, painted with gay armorial devices, were stretched along the top of the bulwarks from poop to forecastle. These were the waist-cloths, ancestors of the nineteenth-century boarding-net.
Mounted at the break of poop and forecastle were the bases, minions and murderers; wicked little breech-loading swivels that could sweep any part of deck or rail with a storm of small shot.
“Boy, bring me my armor!” cried Diego; but the cabin-boy was below, sanding the gun-deck.
Then, suddenly, some one stood by the captain’s side, placing the helmet tenderly on his head, buckling on his breast and back plates. It was Ysabel, careless of who might see.
“I failed ashore,” he whispered. “It was my fault; forgive me, and farewell.”
Her answer, prompted perhaps by the excitement of the moment, perhaps by the certainty of betrayal by the parrot, was to kiss Diego squarely on the lips, in the sight of the whole crew—and of Don Felix de Arruego! Passing by her infuriated betrothed as if he did not exist, she went into the little chapel of Saint Gregory, that opened off the main cabin, and knelt before the altar, where the priests and friars were praying for deliverance from the fury of the heathen.
On plunged the galleon, at the top of her ponderous speed; the wind was freshening, the ebb-tide ran like a mill-race down the narrow channel. But the long, many-oared craft astern gained steadily, urged by the straining efforts of the rowers, till they were not quite within musket-shot. At that distance they remained, holding their position easily, but making no effort to gain.
“I like it not,” said Lieutenant Gomez, as Diego came up to inspect the defenses of the poop. “Why do the heathen follow us so tamely, down this defile to the open, where they know we can turn and blow them to pieces? Being the swifter, why do they not press the pursuit?”
“Because,” answered the captain, “they have blocked the mouth of the channel with those fishing-smacks I pointed out to you.”
“But there is much room at either end of their line,” said the infantry-officer, peering ahead at the little fleet of anchored junks. “Why not outflank and march past them, on the right or left?”
“Good tactics for a soldier,” Diego commented. “But this is the sea. It is too shoal. We must hold on and run one of them down.”
“Charge home and trample them under foot? I have never fought on the sea, but I perceive I shall do so under a wise and valorous general. God keep you, Don Diego!”
“And you, Don Pablo!”
Wringing the simple-hearted little soldier’s hand, Diego went below to the gun-deck, to train, himself, the bow-chasers on the line of anchored junks, now nearly within range. There were five of them, lying squarely across the fairway, broad side on to the approaching galleon. Nets were stretched between them; but there was not a sign of life on their decks.
Firing a first shot over them to give fair warning—of which they took no heed—Diego let drive at the bow and stern of the midmost junk, hoping to smash the bitts and cut her cables. But that was too accurate work for the primitive smooth bores, on a high-built, deep-pitching galleon. Down came the junk’s foremast, and a cloud of splinters flew from her rotten topsides; that was all.
“A worn-out, empty hulk,” said Gil Robles, as Diego came on deck again. “With our weight and speed, we should ride right over her.”
There was no other way. Any attempt to check their own ungainly craft in that narrow tide-race would have piled her up on the sands, a helpless prey to the wolf-pack following astern.
Hold her steady! We are on her!”
With a great crash of splintering timbers, the bluff bows of the San Gregorio crushed through the frail hull of the fishing-junk, snapping her ribs and deck-beams like the veins of a dried leaf. Then the incredible happened. Instead of sinking or breaking in two, the shattered, distorted wreck wrapped itself ’round the destroyer’s forefoot, staying her progress, bringing her, inside of ten seconds, from full speed to a dead standstill.
The strain on the San Gregorio's fabric was terrific—no modern wind-jammer could have suffered it without losing most of her top-hamper. But the Manila-Acapulco galleons had small sail area, teak masts and massive rigging of pure abacá fiber. Though every inch of her shrieked in protest, nothing carried away.
Her plight, however, was hideously obvious. The wrecked junk plastered ’round her bows was held together and made fast by thick grass hawsers to her four consorts; and each of the five was double-anchored, bow and stern! The galleon’s impact had bent the line of junks, causing the two nearest the wreck to drag their anchors, till the Japanese craft were close up under the San Gregorio's forecastle, one on either side.
“Clear away that wreckage! Cut the cables!”
GIL ROBLES and a dozen seamen swarmed down over the bows, knife and hatchet in hand. But before they could sever a single strand, there erupted from the holds of the four uninjured junks a shrieking horde of naked brown men brandishing naked steel. Those that were near enough leaped down with high-heaved blades; others dived over board and swam round to the wreck, holding their swords in their teeth.
Gil Robles split the first comer’s skull with his hatchet. But the odds were too great; three of the galleon’s crew were literally chopped to pieces there on the wreck. Fighting furiously, the mate and the rest of his detail made good then retreat up over the bows, while the heathen hacked at them from below. At last they were once more sheltered by the high, square-built forecastle. Here they turned on their pursuers, and hurled the foremost foemen down into the sea.
“Send forward the musketeers,” implored Gil Robles, swinging his dripping hatchet. “Swivels and musketeers!”
But a roar of musketry from the poop told him the soldiers were busy aft. Well they might be. The Japanese flotilla astern was closing in on the trapped galleon as-fast as oars could drive it. Trapped she was, but not defenseless—the San Gregorio’s stern-chasers, loaded with a solid-shot and a bag of bullets each, smashed one crowded rowboat and made fearful havoc aboard three more.
“Well done, Master-Gunner!” shouted Diego down the main-hatch. “Cease firing! Run in and secure your guns—the boats will be too close alongside to hit before you can reload. Close and make fast the port-shutters; then on deck, all!”
A savage yell of triumph burst from the throats of the bloodthirsty swordsmen aboard the two leading Japanese craft. One to port and one to starboard, they swept up and made fast alongside the San Gregorio's waist. The eager warriors on board them took no heed of the galleon’s topmen, who, having furled and stowed the fore and mainsails, lay out on the lower yards. Yet ready to the hands of those topmen lurked death and destruction. Knives flashed through lanyards, and a great iron cannon-ball dropped like a thunderbolt from aloft on each boat beneath, smashing huge holes through the bottom-boards. Few were the men-at-arms of the first two boat-loads that did not go down with their shattered transports.
Those Japanese that had the chance to leap for the galleon’s main-chains, and the luck to get a hand-hold, pulled themselves up pluckily and bravely tried to scramble aboard. But at each tell-tale inward bulge of the baffling waist-cloths, a Spanish pike or sword-point would lunge through canvas and flesh together.
Arrows tore through the galleon’s rigging. A big negro on the main-yard fell screaming into the sea, a gaily-feathered shaft sticking out from between his shoulder-blades. Back scrambled his mates to the shelter of the round, high-walled fighting-tops; their trick had worked well, but it could be worked but once. The rest of the Japanese flotilla had now come up, its archers loosing swiftly, its eager swordsmen ready to board.
The Spanish musket-balls splintered their gunwales and tore through their armor, inflicting horrible, tearing wounds; but in spite of it, the sampans grappled the San Gregorio fore and aft, port and starboard, as many as could crowd alongside. The rest vomited their swordsmen over the side and into the already packed hulls of those that were at close grips. Trained to scale walls and surmount all obstacles, the gallant Samurai, burdened as they were with armor, swarmed up the sides of the galleon as easily as the naked men from the junks.
Their keen swords slashed away the waist-cloths, now sodden with blood and stuck full of arrows. Only point or ball told against them; no cutlas edge could shear through their strange, loose-meshed mail of lacquered steel.
Eight times the Japanese won a footing on the deck amidships. Eight times the murderer-guns from poop or forecastle tore through the dense mass of them, gashing, shattering, till the fearless boarders reeled, their ranks decimated. Eight times Diego led a handful of weary pikemen in a charge that drove the survivors back into the sea. His splendid spirit, which had trained and inspired the motley crew of the San Gregorio—which was more of an armed passenger ship than a man-of-war—urged them on now to do more than their best, to face and hurl back professional warriors.
But no sooner was one boarding party swept away than a fresh onslaught rolled up over the rail. It was like fighting the waves of the sea. Hundreds of the Japanese remained, and the defenders were now very few. Half those that had held the waist lay dead or desperately wounded on the deck, mingling their blood with that of their fallen foes; and ever the heavy, two-handed Oriental swords sheared through the plates of their dripping armor. And now from the forecastle came a despairing cry.
“More men!” gasped Gil Robles. “More men!”
Glancing swiftly about to count his depleted forces, Diego caught sight of a gorgeous, over-armored figure slinking away toward the shelter of the cabin.
“Don Feliz!” he cried roughly. “Back to your post! What? Your blade is as clean as it was yesterday! Here by me, you dog, and show yourself a man, or by the saints, I will kill you with my own hand!”
The speculator turned toward him a face gray with terror. The flashing Japanese swords had frightened from Arruego all the little manhood he possessed. His diseased imagination pictured those great, razor-edged blades shearing through his shrinking flesh; but the captain’s eyes filled him with a fear more imminent, more terrible than the fear of the shouting, black-masked Japanese. He staggered over to Diego’s side, his rapier trembling in his hand.
“Señor Capitân,” reported a musketeer, saluting with a powder-blackened hand, “Lieutenant Gomez bids me say that he can not hold the poop without reenforcements. Thrice have the heathen scaled the quarter-gallery and nigh forced their way in through the stern-windows of the cabin!”
“Then we must ply them with the murderer-guns,” thought Diego, and beckoned the master-gunner to him. “Shift two swivels to the after-rail and two others to the forecastle-head!” he commanded.
But the old master-gunner made a sign of negation.
“They are all too hot to be shifted, or reloaded either. The last chamber we managed to wedge home exploded with the heat of the breech before I could touch fire to it. Unless you can hold them off with point and edge, you must strike or sound a parley.”
“Never!” replied Diego. “I will fight to the end, and then order you to blow up the magazine!”
“And I will obey,” answered the master-gunner, steadily. “But there are only two barrels of powder left.”
“Then listen,” said the captain, “and I will tell you what to do with them. The scheme is desperate, but we have no other hope.”
“OH LORD OF TOSA,” protested Kurushima’s gray-haired second in command, “half our men are slain, the rest are weary and sorely wounded, and this devil-ship is as strong as ever! Whenever we win her deck and drive back her crew, their high-placed guns sweep us away as an angry chess-player sweeps the pieces from the board. Their weapons are too powerful; their captain, whose sword is everywhere, is no mortal but a demon—else how could he have flown over our castle-wall? Let us give up and row back to the shore! This is worse than the tortoise-boat!”
“Let dogs and cowards pull for the shore!” cried Kurushima. “Let the true Samurai follow me!”
Without waiting to see if any followed, the Daimio sprang from the stern of his own disabled boat to that of another, half full of blood-tinged water, whose bow touched the San Gregorio's waist. Pulling himself up by the channels, he climbed to the gunwale and stood there, slashing away the tattered waist-cloths, till he could look down upon the deck.
Before him stood a Spaniard: a sallow, effeminate-looking man with cunning, shifty eyes and livid face, whose splendid Milanese breastplate, cuishes, and morion showed no mark of battle. Don Feliz de Arruego, the successful speculator in billetes, had been equally successful in keeping himself out of harm’s way till now, just after Diego had caught him skulking, and ordered him to the rail. And fear of his captain kept him there, though nothing could make him fight like a man.
But now up rose before him, framed in blood-stained canvas, the fearsome figure of a Japanese warrior, whose loose-fitting armor made his crouching body seem monstrously misshapen; beneath the crested helmet, his face was twisted into a hideous war-mask, from which his eyes, black and gleaming, shot terror into Arruego’s craven soul. Forgetting that he held a sword in his own hand, the poor wretch did the most dangerous thing possible; he turned his back and fled.
Like a wildcat, Kurushima sprang after him from the top of the five-foot bulwark; and as he sprang, he raised his two-handed sword on high and brought it down with all his weight and strength on the other’s helmeted head. Through steel and scalp and skull the keen-edged blade shore its way, till the cloven morion fell to the deck in two pieces. Tottering with hands outflung, Feliz fell dead over the fragments of his own morion.
Wrenching his sword free, the Daimio turned to face a seaman who thrust at him with a pike. With three strokes of incredible swiftness, Kurushima parried the thrust, cut the pike-head from its staff, and sent the seaman’s own head rolling after it into the scuppers. This was too much—the other Spaniards bunched near shrank back before him and away from the rail, over which more Japanese, encouraged by their lord’s example, were clambering in growing numbers.
“Oh, men of Tosa!” shouted Kurushima. “The ship is ours!”
“Hold them five minutes!” rang an answering voice in Spanish. “Hold them off five minutes, and we are free!”
And rallying his weary crew, Diego de Torres leaped forward and crossed swords with Kurushima. Arch-types of the Eastern and Western warriors of their day, the two engaged in single combat, unhindered by the general mêlée raging ’round them. No other Spaniard wished to meddle with the terrible Daimio; and no Japanese warrior would have presumed to interfere in a battle-field duel between two chiefs.
Diego, fighting for time, stood on the defense; but Kurushima attacked with desperate speed and fury. He did not know what new and terrible means of resistance the galleon’s crew might use at any moment, and he could see his own men look anxiously up at the silent swivels, even as they fought. And ever in Kurushima’s mind was a vision of the San Gregorio, under his own command, sinking the tortoise-boat and freeing the way for Japan’s armies to march on to endless conquests. The thought that on the outcome of this combat hung the fate of Asia nerved his every blow.
In all Japan, few swordsmen were Kurushima’s equal. His strokes sheared through the stoutest mail, his feints were dazzling, his sureness of eye and hand proverbial. With all his tremendous strength and skill, he cut and slashed, leaping back and forth to confuse his opponent. Now he struck for Diego’s head, now for his right shoulder, now for his left thigh, turning his blade in mid-stroke, till it seemed to fill the air about him with a shimmering mist.
But wherever it fell, the Japanese sword beat and glanced off the parrying blade of the Spanish rapier. Never was the contact at such an angle that the edge of the heavy two-handed weapon could bite into and cut through the slender ribbon of steel which always met and turned it. The European’s supple wrist-play gave him a freedom and length of reach unknown to the Samurai, who held his long hilt rigidly with both hands. And ever as Diego parried, he studied the strength and weakness of Kurushima’s strange, silk-braided mail, designed to turn the edge—but not the point.
Suddenly, as Kurushima heaved up his sword for a mighty blow, a cold, tingling pang shot through his exposed breast. His stroke stayed in mid-air, he glanced down, and saw Diego’s silver hilt pressed firmly against his breast-bone, the Spaniard’s arm outstretched behind it. With a sharp pull, Diego withdrew his rapier. A fountain of blood spurted after it; the long blade itself was bloody to the point. Kurushima strove to bring down his own sword, but instead, he heaved a long sigh and slid in a crumpled heap to the deck.
At that very moment, two mighty columns of water, crested with shattered bits of wood, cordage and human fragments, spouted high into the air from under the galleon’s bows. The roar of a double explosion followed instantly. In obedience to the captain’s orders, the old master-gunner and his mates had dropped the last two barrels of powder, fitted with burning fuses, over the bows to blow away the tangled mass of wreckage and hawsers that held the ship a prisoner. By one of those rare miracles that sometimes crown supreme daring, the explosion had done its intended work without damaging the galleon.
The San Gregorio, her bows heaved high in the air by the force of the concussion, shivered, and brought them down with a force that snapped the last strands which bound her. Urged by wind and tide, the galleon surged ahead, out of the mouth of the channel and into the open sea.
Terrified by this fearful phenomenon, and by the fall of their invincible Daimio, most of the surviving Japanese turned and threw themselves overside. The rest cast down their weapons and begged for mercy, which was readily granted, for the San Gregorio was now too desperately short-handed to continue the fight.
“Te Deum Laudamus!” sang the priests and friars in the chapel.
Diego, kneeling on the crimsoned deck, felt two soft arms steal ’round his neck, felt a kiss upon his cheek.
“I saw it all,” whispered Ysabel. “Brave man! That other is dead, too; nothing can keep us apart any more.”
“Nothing,” Diego answered; then he loosed the clinging arms.
He had no thought of prayer, of thanksgiving (or victory; no thought of his ship that he had saved; little even of the riches and the love he had won with the Lady Ysabel. His thoughts were all for his gallant foe.
“He is dying,” he whispered to the girl, and turned once more to the prostrate Japanese, striving desperately to stanch the wound which he had himself inflicted.
At the touch of Diego’s hand, Kurushima’s body stiffened, his eyes opened, his right arm instinctively raised itself and the sword to which his fingers still clung. His undaunted will forced the dying hand to lift it an inch, two inches, from the deck.
Then, as his eyes met and recognized Diego’s, the battle-light died out of the Daimio’s face, and a smile of friendship shone faintly in its stead. The tired right hand relaxed its grip on the hilt. The sword fell clanging on the deck; the soul of the Samurai had passed.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1971, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 52 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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