“No doubt,” replied he. “Yet we had merry sport with the Don while it lasted; and methinks he will run a bit without our help, before he find out that we fight him with one arm bound.”
So it turned out. The fight dragged on through the afternoon, and ship after ship of the King of Spain went to her doom, or drifted helplessly on the mud banks of Gravelines. But the English fire dropped shorter and shorter; and as evening closed (had the enemy but known it!) we had scarce a broadside left among us.
Yet Heaven remembered us in our extremity. For no sooner had our guns become mute than the south wind came down on us with a burst, catching us in the small of our backs, and sending the Don away in front of us, staggering and reeling seaward, for his very life.
’Twas a sad spectacle for me. I had long since lost sight of the Rata. In vain I scanned the smoke-laden horizon for a sight of her. I never saw her more. I could fancy Ludar stalking the deck, or scaling the masts wildly, in search of me; and then, when he found me not, with the cloud deep on his noble brow, crawling to his berth in the dark to tell himself that I was dead.
I wished that night he could have thought it truly!
Will Peake, when the work of the day was done, was in vast great humour to find me of the ship’s company. He had scarce known me at first, so changed was I by the perils of the last weeks. A score or more of swashbuckling ’prentices were on board the ship, he said; and, presently, when I saw them all, and heard their jests, and knocked some of their heads together, I could have believed myself in Cheapside. Having been some two weeks on board, they were mightily proud of their seamanship, and delighted to call me (who had sailed as many seas as they had ponds), landlubber.
However, it mattered not, and we spent a merry night—at least they did—scudding before the wind, and watching the Spanish lanthorns rocking uneasily in the darkness a mile ahead of us.
When daylight came, there they were in a long disorderly line, never looking back, with canvas set, and still running. Some of our ships hung close on their heels, like dogs at a flying ox; but scarce a shot boomed, and never a tack did the Dons slack off their northward course.
As for us, there were two good reasons why we, on the Vanguard, should not keep up the chase. We had neither shot to fire nor food to eat. When I came forward that morning to receive my morsel of biscuit with the rest, I understood how ill-pleased Master Winter had been to see another hungry body on board his ship. Even yesterday, as we had helped the bodies of the brave fellows who had fallen for their Queen overboard, it was plain to see that there was something of consolation joined to the pity we all felt for our lost comrades; and the sight of my beggarly rations when I received them made it clear what that consolation was.
So when, after a day’s chase, the word was given to put about, and beat up for Margate Roads, scarce a man among us had the stomach to grumble.