What I next remember was standing bewildered on the deck, amidst a crowd of soldiers, many of whom wore bright steel armour, and who exercised on the heaving planks well-nigh as steadily as on dry ground. The deck was ablaze with pennons and scutcheons. Somewhere near, the noise of trumpets rose above the roar of the waves. The sun, as it struggled through the mist, flashed on the brass of guns, and the jewels of sword-hilts. The poop behind rose like a stately house, illumined with its swinging lanthorns. Now and again there flitted past me a long-robed priest, to whom all bowed, and after him boys with swaying censers. There was a neighing of horses amidships, and a tolling of bells in the forecastle. The great bellying sails glittered with painted dragons and eagles and sun-bursts. And the men who lined the crosstrees and crowded the tops shouted and answered in a tongue that was new to me. Above all, higher than the helmsman’s house or the standard on the poop, shone out a gilded cross, which looked over all the ship.
Little wonder if, as I slowly looked round me and rubbed my eyes, I knew not where I was.
But Ludar, standing near me, steadying himself with the cordage, called me to myself.
“This must be a Spaniard,” said he, faintly.
“A Spaniard!” gasped I, “an enemy to our Queen and—”
“Look yonder,” said he, stopping me and pointing seaward, where the mist was lifting apace.
There I could discern, as far as my eyes could reach, a great curved line of vessels, many of them like that on which I stood; some larger and grander, some smaller and propelled by oars; all with flags flying and signals waving, and their course pointed all one way.
Not even I, landsman as I was, could mistake what I saw. This could be naught else but the great fleet of the Spanish King, of whose coming we had heard rumours for a year past, but in which I for one had not really believed till thus suddenly I found myself standing on the deck of one of its greatest galleons.
In the horror of the discovery, my first impulse was to fling myself back into the waves from which I had been saved; my second was to seize my sword and fly at the first man I saw, and so die for my country then and there.
But, alas! I was too weak to do either. When I took a step it was to fall in a heap on the deck, faint with hunger, wrath, and shame.