Of course all disguise and concealment was now at an end; the pirate had seen them, but--too late! She was now less than a cable's length distant from the _Elizabeth_, and as she was bearing up, and before even her men could leap to their quarters, the _Elizabeth_ had luffed and delivered her starboard broadside with murderous effect. Down came the mainmast, severed just above the deck, bringing the fore-topgallant-mast with it; down on her crowded decks crashed the wreckage, adding its own quota of killed and wounded to that effected by the guns of the English vessel. The flag-ship had already borne up, and now came foaming down to the scene of the combat, with the _Tiger_ lumbering along astern. The pitchy blackness of the night was illuminated redly and vividly by the flashes of the guns. The _Black Pearl_, finding escape impossible, had determined to fight to the bitter end. Her guns were run out, and they at once opened a galling and well-directed fire upon the _Elizabeth_, which replied in kind, and the night air resounded with the report of cannon and small-arms, and was rent with cries, groans, and screams from the wounded, and shouts and oaths from all. The flag-ship now arrived on the scene, and, taking a wide sweep and luffing up with main-topsail aback under the stern of the _Black Pearl_, poured in a raking broadside that traversed the whole length of the pirate's decks, leaving them a very shambles of dead and wounded. The artillery tight did not last very long. Anxious to capture Jose Leirya alive, Cavendish--perhaps not too well advisedly--laid his ship alongside the schooner, and poured his men on to the pirate's decks. Seeing this, the captain of the _Elizabeth_, not to be behindhand, did the same. Ordering his men away from the guns, and forming them up, he led them in person over the side on to the decks of the _Pearl_, which was by this time a scene of dreadful carnage. Blood was everywhere; her planking was so slimy with it that men slipped and fell in it. It ran in little rivulets from the scuppers. Roger, who followed close upon the heels of the captain, thought involuntarily of William Evans's description of how Jose Leirya had captured this very vessel, cutting her out from under San Juan fort in Puerto Rico; and his tale of how freely the blood flowed on these same decks then. But he had no time for mere thought; his attention was wholly taken up with the fighting, and the problem of how to avoid being impaled or cut down by some furious pirate. The villains knew that they were fighting with halters round their necks, and laid about them like very demons from the pit. Cut and thrust, cut and thrust, they came at the Englishmen, and, headed by Jose himself, for several moments swept the invaders before them.