A loud cheer now rose close astern; it came from the crew of the _Queen Margaret_; and both ships then bore on towards the enemy, leaving the sea covered with the _débris_ of the wreck; and as the old ballad says,-- "Many was the feather-bed, That fluttered on the foam; And many was the gude lord's son, That never mair came home. "The ladies wrang their fingers white, The maidens tore their hair; A' for the sake o' those true loves, They never shall see mair." "May they sleep as soundly in the Scottish sea as my father sleeps in their Kentish downs," said Barton; "but many a blue corpselicht will dance on these waters ere the sun of to-morrow rises." "To your guns again, my merry men all," cried the Admiral "they are two to one against us; but if we put them not to rout we were no better than Gordon gowks, and there will be many a toom bowie and kirn in Fife and Lothian. Heed not King Henry's bitter almonds, for I swear by my honour as a seaman and faith as a knight, that every shipmate o' mine who loseth a fin, shall swing his hammock for life in Largo Tower, and share the goods kind God hath given me; he shall never lack a brass bodle or a can of ale while auld Andrew Wood hath both to part with him fairly over the capstan head; so stand every man to his quarters--put your faith in God and St. Andrew, and fight, my lads, as you have often fought before, for auld Scotland and her glory!" This characteristic harangue was answered by a hurrah, and many a weatherbeaten and well-bearded visage glowed redly along the gun-deck when the matches were blown, and the waves sparkled in the moonlight, as they ran merrily past the triced-up lids of the open ports through which the brass culverins and guns of Scottish yetlin were run and pointed, after being primed and shotted for battle. "Sir David Falconer, send thine arquebussiers aft, line the taffrail and fill the tops with them--away aloft!" cried the Admiral, "and shame be on the last who is through the lubber's hole or over the foot-hook shrouds!"