But the eyes of St. Magil, looking across to it from the outer shade of the _Madre de Dios’s_ bow, suddenly grew grave and lost their triumph. The wind had changed. Fate intervened. Vytal was backed by the elements. The insidious fire, of Sir Walter’s own kindling, had recoiled. The _Admiral_ carried no sails, the _Madre de Dios_ many. The fire returned to feed itself. Leaving behind it a burning skeleton superstructure, from which small spars fell flaming on the combatants amid a maze of ropes that glowed like fuses over all, it glided back, a venomous snake, to the Spanish vessel, or, rather, like a hundred snakes, for the very grapple-ropes by which St. Magil had bound his enemy were golden serpents now writhing to the shrouds. Suddenly a tongue of fire, licking the Spanish bowsprit and spritsail yards, lolled listlessly for an instant, as though satiated and fatigued, then shot up all the more greedily to the foretop. And now a wavering sheet of flame rose and swayed like an immense golden flag, as though the fire itself had flung to the breeze a royal emblem of destruction. But at the instant, when only the bowsprit and spritsail yard had as yet succumbed, St. Magil had hastened amidships. Here he commanded the few Spaniards who had not yet forced their way to the English vessel to cut the grapples and cast off immediately. But the intertwining fingers that he himself had stretched out to enfold the prey held tenaciously. Snarled inextricably, they lay across from ship to ship, high and low, a hopeless tangle of fetters. When finally the sheet of flame unspread itself aloft, St. Magil desisted. His men would have rushed then to the _Admiral_, preferring the chance of battle to a furnace death; but he controlled with desperate power. “Cut away the bowsprit and foretop-gallant-mast!” The men, following him, ran to the forecastle. “The foretop-gallant-mast is too high. It burns!” “The foretop-mast, then, quick! and cut the halyards!” A sudden descending flare, as if the heavens had opened to envelop the striving seamen, and the flag of flame lay roaring at their feet. The fire had struck its colors. They grasped the burning canvas and flung it overboard. “To the attack!” And St. Magil, at last drawing his sword for open fight, led them in the main contest. Two score Englishmen, in double file, stood side by side on the _Admiral’s_ deck repelling a superior force that strove to exterminate them. The front line fought with swords; the rear with pistols and musketoons, whose barrels looked out between friendly shoulders before them. Thus the swordsmen, ranged alternately with the musketeers, were slightly in advance, and must needs bear the brunt of the onslaught.