Drake gave his orders quickly and calmly. “The Spanish are coming from Valparaiso to the east. We’ll unload to the west so the galleon shelters us. Jed Trickett… you hold them off.”
Jed snorted. “By myself, Captain?”
“No, young Tom here will help you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you, Tom lad. Are you arguing again?”
“No, Captain,” I said quickly.
“Take two muskets, powder and shot. Trickett will fire a musket while you load the other one. That’ll give them something to think about. Now move, before I throw you to the fishes,” he said.
We moved. We looked through one of the cannon ports and saw three gunboats heading towards us with about thirty soldiers in each. They were heading into the west wind, so they needed to be rowed by clumsy oarsmen. The boats were slow, but they would reach us before a quarter hour was gone.
Jed took the first musket and fired a shot that splashed harmlessly into the sea. “Missed,” he muttered as I took the musket and passed him a loaded one.
Moments later twenty musket balls splintered the wood beside us. “They’re good shots!” Jed laughed. “Better than me.”
“The next round of shots could hit me!” I squawked.
Jed nodded. “That’s one good reason for moving to another gun port,” he said and crawled quickly along the deck to where another black cannon stood. “If I fire from here, they’ll think we have quite a few musketeers… that’ll slow them down.”
I ran after him, keeping my head below the wooden rail.
Captain Drake was helping his men unload the treasure onto the boat. He watched it sail across to the Golden Hind and unload while our crew brought more onto the deck of the galleon.
“How are we doing, Trickett?” he asked.
“Keeping them guessing,” he replied.
Drake shook his head. “This is too slow,” he sighed. He called across the water with waving arms. “Bring the Golden Hind alongside – we’ll load straight onto her.”
Another round of musket fire smashed into the side of the ship. “I’ve been hit,” Jed Trickett moaned, and fell backwards with blood streaming down his face.
The captain ran across to the deck. I thought he was going to help patch Jed’s wound, but he didn’t. No, that wasn’t Drake’s way. Instead, he pulled the wounded man away from the side and snatched up the musket. “It’s you and me now, Tom, against the might of Spain. Keep loading.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
As my captain kept firing, I saw the Spanish boy begin to slip across the deck towards us. I’d just loaded a musket, and I pointed it at him. I’d never fired a gun in my young life, but I’d have shot him if he’d tried to harm my captain.
The boy shook his head and pointed at Jed, who was groaning and clutching at his face. “Ayudará,” he said.
“Ayud… aid… aid him?”
The boy nodded. He tore at his shirt sleeve and made a bandage to stop the bleeding. If you ask me, he saved my friend’s life.
But I was too busy loading muskets to worry about Jed just then. The Spanish gunboats were drawing nearer – the oarsmen clattering into the soldiers, who were standing up and trying to fire at us. I felt a shudder as the Golden Hind nudged into us. Loading the gold went much quicker. Our crew tipped the buckets down onto the Golden Hind, which was much smaller than the galleon.
At last the gunboats drew close enough for the Spanish to haul out their small cannon. Captain Drake and I watched as they loaded a stone cannonball and raised the barrel towards us.
Drake snorted. “They won’t fire on one of their own galleons.”
Three things happened very quickly. There was a puff of smoke and the stone ball flew towards us. The rail near our heads shattered into a thousand pieces. And, strangest of all, their cannon crashed backwards in the gunboat and sent Spanish soldiers tumbling, screaming into the water. The kick from the gun was so great it cracked the hull and we could see the gunboat start to fill with water. Soldiers scrambled to reach the other two gunboats, grabbed for the oars and almost upset them.
Drake laughed, rose to his feet and took off his hat. He waved it at the panicking Spanish. “Adios, amigos… from Draco!” he cried.
Then, to me, he said, “Time to go home, Tom lad.”