ilip of Spain had not yet muzzled the English sea-
dogs.

So the night passed, and when morning dawned, cold and grey, I was
stupid with sleep, and hunger, and loneliness. The storm had died away,
and the water lay sullen and still, while the sails below flapped
heavily in the wind. The _Rata_ had dropped to the rear of the Armada,
which spread eastward in a long irregular line, very different from the
grand curve with which she had swept on Plymouth.

Behind us, some three miles away, cruised the Englishmen, looking at us;
while, betwixt us and the far distant Portland headland, I could see the
vast hull of one of our own galleons (the same which had blown up in the
night), surrounded by a swarm of little craft that picked her bones,
like crows on a carcase. Nearer still lay a great disabled Spaniard,
with bowsprit and top-masts gone, and flag struck, being towed by her
capturers into port. As for the _Rata_ herself, 'twas sad to see how
dingy the gay gilding had become in one day, and how sails were riddled,
tackle flying, and scutcheons toppled over.

Yet, I had but a passing glance for all these. Where was Ludar? Was he
returned? Or was he in the Englishmen's hands? Or was the little cock-
boat, perchance, floating somewhere bottom uppermost, and he beneath it?
I scanned the waters till my eyes ached. Far ahead, miles away, I
fancied I could see, towering among the other galleons, the Duke's royal
standard. But, amidst these huddled ships, and water littered with many
a spar and little boat, with galleys gliding here and there, signals
going, with movings in and out, this way and that, who was to find a
solitary man in a cock-boat?

Yet, I think, love has keener eyes than most; and so I, looking again
towards where a few stout English craft, returning to their line after a
cruise up Channel, cracked out their broadside on the nearest Spaniard
within reach, I seemed to see between us and them something in the water
which made me look twice. It may have been half-a-mile away, a speck on
the water, like some floating barrel or spar. Yet, for the stillness of
the water, it moved, as I thought, more than an idle log; and once, as
the sun flashed out for a moment along the surface, I thought it to be a
head and shoulders.

Presently I lost it, for the glare of the rising sun blotted it out like
a speck on a shining mirror. I began to think it was but fancy, or,
even if it be a swimmer, it could never be