ir teeth, the Duke sent up a signal to give
Plymouth the go-by and sail up Channel. Which was done in a very
chapfallen manner; and the great Armada, huddled together, and standing
not on the order of its going, turned its heads into the wind, and
struggled eastward, the _Rata_ being near the rear of the procession.

The Englishmen hung doggedly on our heels; now and then coming up within
shot, and then, having let off their broadsides, dropping away before we
could put round to engage them. Never once did they come to close
quarters, much as the Spaniard longed for it; and never once did they
give him time to try conclusions on equal terms.

The rest of that day Ludar and I were so busy at our carpenters' work
abaft that we had no clear view of what passed. We heard dropping shot
now and then, and now and again a bolt thundered on to our own hull and
buried itself deep in our timbers; while, once, a terrible blaze ahead,
followed by a rumbling which set the _Rata_ shivering in all her planks,
told us of disaster and explosion somewhere near among the Spaniards
themselves. What it all meant we could only guess. For the night came
on us roughly, and, as darkness closed, it was all our helmsman could
do, with a sharp look-out, to give his fellow ships a wide berth,
without going out of his course to look after them.

As soon as ever it was dark, Ludar and I and some dozen others were
ordered over the stern in baskets to patch up the holes made by the
English shot, and repair the insulted gilding of his Majesty of Spain.
No light work it was; suspended betwixt wind and water, groping with
lanthorns at our work, rearing and plunging with the waves, and every
now and then hearing the boom of a gun behind, which made us wince and
wonder whose head was wanted next. Once I thought it was mine; for a
great crashing shot came past me out of the darkness, spinning my basket
round like a top, and lodging fair in the hole I was mending. Scarce
had I time to thank God for my escape, when the man next me uttered a
cry and flung up his arms; and there he hung a moment, pinned to the
stern by a cloth-yard arrow which pierced his back, before he tumbled
over, a dead man, into the sea. One after another of our comrades
dropped, till at last it seemed to me Ludar and I alone were left.

"Humphrey," he said, when at last we stood on deck, "I reckon we be
almost quits with the King of Spain by now."

"Ay indeed," said I, "and I t