The two first French ships
that arrived were speedily captured, but when the rest came up a desperate
battle took place. Guy was on the point of ordering his ship to be laid
alongside a French craft little larger than his own, when his eye fell
upon a great ship carrying the flag of a French admiral, and at once
diverting the course of his vessel, he ran alongside her. The archers were
on the bow and stern castles of his ship, and as they came within a short
distance of the Frenchman, they sent their arrows thick and fast into the
crowded mass on her deck. Two grapnels, to each of which were attached
twenty feet of chain, were thrown into the shrouds of the French vessel,
and Guy shouted to the men-at-arms in the waist to keep the enemy from
boarding by holding the vessels apart by thrusting out light spars and
using their spears.
The French had a few cross-bowmen on board, but Guy, running up on to the
castle at the bow, where Long Tom himself was posted, bade him direct the
fire of his men solely against them, and in a very short time the
discharge of missiles from the French ship ceased. In vain the French
attempted to bring the ships alongside each other by throwing grapnels;
the ropes of these were cut directly they fell, and although many of the
English spears were hacked in two, others were at once thrust out, and the
spars, being inclined so as to meet the hull of the enemy below the water-
line, could not be reached by their axes.
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