"On!" shouted Richard. "It is our fight now! Short work is good work!"
The O'Rourke yelled something in the old Erse tongue, and his giants followed him as he fought his way to the side of Richard Neville; but David Griffith summoned his remaining Welshmen, and was followed also by two score of Kentish bowmen, as he hastened forward to join Ben o' Coventry and his daring fellows on the forecastle of La Belle Calaise. It was time, for there were good French knights yet left to lead in a desperate attempt to dislodge them. It was, however, as if the deck or roof of that wooden fort, made with bulwarks and barricades to protect it against all enemies of France, had been just as well prepared to be held by an English garrison. Moreover, all manner of weapons had been put there, ready for use; and among these were pikes and lances with which the Welshmen could thrust at the men who tried to climb the ladders from the waist, while the archers shot for dear life, unerringly.
"My Lord Beaumont," shouted one of the French men-at-arms, "all of our boarders on the English ship are down or taken. Not one is left. Here come the Neville and his tigers. God and St. Denis! We are lost!"
"Courage!" returned Beaumont. "Fight on; we shall overcome them yet!"
But a heavy mace, hurled by a big Cornishman on the forecastle, at that moment smote him on the helm. He fell stunned, while his dismayed comrades shrank back from the storm of English arrows and from the mad rush of Richard and his men-at-arms and the O'Rourke and his Irish axemen.
The French were actually beaten in detail, their greater numbers at no time doing them any good.
In each part of the fight they had had fewer men at the front, and the few that now remained fit to fight seemed to be in a manner surrounded.
"Quarter, if thou wilt surrender!" cried Richard to a knight with closed visor, with whom he was crossing swords.
"Quarter!" came faintly back, "Surrender!" and then he sank upon one knee, for he was wounded by an arrow in the thigh.
"All good knights yield themselves to me!" again shouted Richard in French. "They who hold out are lost!"
More than one of them still fought on in a kind of despair, but others laid down their swords at the feet of Richard. As for any other of the defenders of La Belle Calaise, it was sad to seek them; for the Golden Horn had no man left on board of her save Jack of London at the helm, and the English pikes were everywhere plying mercilessly.