"Master," the lad cried, "I pray you have a care how you expose yourself to the aim of the archer who hath just fired at you. His arrows have pursued you this long while past. And--and--prithee, Master Gilbert, dost know who 'tis?"
"Nay, how should I know one Spaniard from another?" Gilbert asked, passing on towards the wounded man. But Robin held him.
"Hark you, my master," cried the lad, "I have seen his face. I saw it but a few moments ago, and, as I live, 'tis the face of your own cousin, Master Philip Oglander!"
Now Gilbert, despite the excitement of the battle had not forgotten Drusilla's letter that was nestling within his doublet under the protection of his breastplate. His thoughts had gone more than once to his home and to the remembrance of his uncle's trickery, and this had increased by an hundredfold his hatred of all friends of Spain, and he had fought with a spirit of personal vengeance as well as with the desire to help his fellow-countrymen and his Queen in this battle against their dread enemy. For an instant he doubted the truth of what Robin had told him, and when he had served the wounded man with his drink of water, and helped him down to the crowded cockpit, he looked out through one of the portholes in search of his cousin in the galleon's tops. But the place where his enemy had stood was now cleared of men, and Philip Oglander was nowhere to be seen.
As he was mounting the ladder-stairs to regain the deck, he came upon a man climbing painfully upward with a sword between his teeth. Putting his arm about the man's body to assist him, he said:
The man looked round at him. It was Red Bob.
"Not I," he answered. "But I can no longer lie and listen to the groans of my friends down there, nor to the booming of the guns, and think that, ill though I am, I have not yet fired a shot or drawn a weapon in defence of this good ship. A score of the sick men have already gone up to fight, Master Oglander, and 'tis my intention to join them, and do what little I can."
"May the good God put strength into your arm, then!" returned Gilbert, and, stepping upon the deck, he drew the man with him, and gave him a loaded pistol and a bag of powder and shot. Jacob Hartop encountered them as they moved aft.