Paita was respectably fortified, and held by a considerable garrison. Anson despatched three boats and fifty-eight men, under Lieutenant Brett, against the town, keeping his ships out of sight of land. Brett pulled with cool daring through the dark night, and almost reached the fort before the alarm was given. Then lights flashed through the awakening town, the church bells rang, the garrison ran to arms, the guns of the fort flashed redly through the darkness over the boats. But Brett, pulling with silent speed across the bay, leaped ashore, carried the fort with a rush, the governor and the garrison fleeing; and sixty British sailors remained in undisputed possession of the town, only one man of the attacking party being killed and two wounded! Anson's ships by daybreak were off the town, and more than £30,000 in coined silver was carried on board from the public treasury, and the whole town was burnt, though no injury was offered to the inhabitants.

Anson next proceeded to lay a trap for the Acapulco ship, scattering his tiny squadron in a semicircle—but out of sight of land-off Acapulco. The Spaniards, however, somehow caught a gleam of the white topsails of one of his ships over the edge of the horizon, and at that signal of terror the sailing of the galleon was postponed for a year! Anson, discovering this, turned the stems of his vessels to the wide and lonely Pacific. He would cruise off the coast of California, and intercept the Manilla galleon, on its voyage to Acapulco. He destroyed all his prizes, and began his voyage with two ships, the Centurion and the Gloucester. Scurvy broke out afresh. A furious gale smote the

LORD ANSON AND THE CENTURION

45

two English ships. On July 26, the captain of the Gloucester hailed the Centurion, and reported that his mainmast was sprung, and discovered to be completely rotten; he had seven feet of water in the hold; only ninety-seven of the crew, including officers and boys, remained, and out of this whole number only sixteen men and eleven boys were capable of keeping the deck.

Anson's dogged purpose never swerved. He transshipped to the Centurion the Gloucester's crew and part of her stores, and then set fire to her. Anson's squadron of five ships was thus reduced to a single vessel, a floating speck on the tossing floor of the wide and empty Pacific. The men, too, were dying at the rate of ten or twelve a day. The ship was leaky. Provisions were bad, and the supply of water almost exhausted. Still Anson kept steadfastly on his course, and on August 28 sighted Tinian, one of the Ladrone islands. Twenty-one of the crew died after the island came in sight, and before the sick could be landed; but the pure water and fresh fruits of Tinian arrested the raging scurvy as if by magic. Anson himself was down with scurvy amongst the sick on the island, when, on September 23, a furious tempest tore the Centurion from her anchorage, and she vanished over the horizon, amidst raging seas and driving rain. Anson seemed to be abandoned utterly, without resources or help. His steadfast courage, however remained unshaken. He crept from his tent with the poison of scurvy still in his blood, and set the men to work to lengthen a tiny twelve-foot boat they had. He would sail in it across the 600 leagues of trackless sea, without

compass or chart, to Macao! On October 11, however, the storm-rent canvas of the Centurion was visible once more over the sky-line, and she crept back slowly to her anchorage.

Anson refitted his ship, sailed from Tinian on October 21, and reached Macao on November 12. It was two years since he left Spithead-two years into which had been packed as much of suffering and hardship, of tempest, and plague, and death, and of the heroism, which not tempest, nor plague, nor death itself could shake, as can be found, perhaps, in any other sea story extant.

Anson remained at Macao till April 19, 1743; then, with ship refitted, though not remanned, and stores renewed, he set sail ostensibly for Batavia, and thence to England. But when out of sight of land he called his men aft, told them there must be two galleons sailing from Acapulco this year, and he intended to capture them both! Each galleon, it might be added was double in weight of artillery and fighting force to the Centurion; but that circumstance Anson regarded as an irrelevant detail, to be dismissed without further consideration! Anson's men, hardened by suffering, and careless of peril, and full of confidence in their silent, much-enduring captain, welcomed the announcement with a shout, and the stem of the Centurion was turned towards the Philippine Islands, one of the way-marks in the course of the gold-ships of Spain. Anson's crew, at that moment, consisted of 201 hands, including officers, idlers, and boys; he had only forty-five able seamen. Each galleon, on the other hand, carried a crew of about 600 men. Anson warned his crew that the galleons

were "stout ships and fully manned"; but Jack Tar's arithmetic, when applied to the business of reckoning up an enemy's force, is of curious quality; and Anson's men felt as cheerfully confident of capturing the wealth of the Spanish treasure-ships as though the yellow gold were already in their breeches' pockets! Anson's chaplain, indeed, tells an amusing story in proof of this. A few Chinese sheep were on board, intended for the officers' table, but for some days no mutton made its appearance there. The ship's butcher, on being interrogated, explained that only two sheep were left, and he was reserving those for the entertainment of "the generals of the galleons" after they were captured!

On May 30, the Centurion reached the desired cruising ground off Cape Espiritu Santo, and day by day, during all the month of June, the sky-line was searched by keen look-outs from the mastheads of the Centurion. The days went tamely by, and offered only the same spectacle of azure sea and azure sky, and a horizon broken by no gleam of white sail. On June 20, however, a quick-eyed middy, at the main topmast of the Centurion, caught a point of gleaming silver on the sky-line too steady for a seagull's wing. The news ran through the ship. It was early dawn, and soon in the glittering sunlight-a little south of where the day was breaking the long-looked-for sail was visible. Only one ship, however, was in sight. Where was its consort? At half-past seven the galleon fired a gun, and took in her topgallant sails; this surely was a signal to her consort, still out of sight! And it shows the amazing audacity of Anson that he bore steadily down to attack two ships, each of which was double his own

in strength. As a matter of fact, however, there was only a solitary galleon before him—a great ship with heavy guns, huge quarter-deck galleries, and a crew of over six hundred men. Its captain, a gallant Spaniard, bore steadily down, the standard of Spain flying at the masthead, and at noon, being about a league distant from the Centurion, brought to under topsails, and waited resolutely for the Centurion to begin the fight.

Anson stood on in perfect fighting rig. He had placed thirty of his best marksmen in his tops, and expected with them to scourge the Spaniard's decks with fire and drive the men from their guns. He had not one-fourth the number of hands necessary to work his broadside, and he detailed two men to each gun, whose sole business it was to load it; the rest he divided into gangs of ten, whose business it was to pass from gun to gun as it was loaded, run it out, aim, and discharge it. He thus kept up a constant fire of single guns, instead of firing whole broadsides; and his method had an unsuspected advantage. "It is common with the Spaniards," writes his chaplain, "to fall down upon the decks when they see a broadside preparing, and to continue in that posture until it is given; after which they rise again, and, presuming the danger to be for some time over, work their guns, and fire with great briskness, till another broadside is ready." Anson's plan of a continuous fire of single well-aimed guns, however, quite spoiled these Spanish tactics and abated their "briskness."

A squall of wind and rain broke over the two ships as they neared each other, and Anson could see through the driving rain that his antagonist was caught unpre