CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.
HOW THE INVINCIBLE ARMADA CAME INTO BRITISH WATERS.
We had scarce got our head round the South Foreland, when there met us a gale of wind, such as boded ill enough for our quick voyage to Rochelle.
June as it was, it was as cold as March, and along with the rain came sleet and hail, which tempted us to wonder if winter were not suddenly come instead of summer.
I feared good man Petrie, the captain, would run for shelter into Dover or some English port where (who knows ?) Ludar might be seen and taken.
But instead of that he stood out stoutly for the French coast, and after a week's battle with the waves put in, battered and leaking, at Dieppe.
There we waited some two weeks, mending our cracks, and hoping for a change of weather.

But the gale roared on, defying us to get our nose out of port, and sending in on us wrecks and castaways which promised us a hot welcome from the open channel.
But after about two weeks the wind slackened and shifted a point from the seaward.

So, although the waves still ran high, we put out, and with short sail laboured towards Cherbourg.
This storm suited Ludar's humour, and while all of us whistled for fair weather, his spirits rose as he turned his face to windward, and watched the good ship stagger through the waves.

Of his own accord he volunteered to help among the seamen, and ordered me to do the same.
And the captain was very glad of the aid; for it was all the crew could do to keep the _Misericorde_ taut and straight in her course.
When we came off Cherbourg we resolved to lose no more time by putting in; and finding our timbers sound and our canvas well in the wind, we stood out for Ushant.
But Master Petrie repented, a day out, that he had been so hardy.

For the nearer we struggled to the open ocean, the greater grew the seas, which presently broke across our bows with a force that made every timber creak, and laid us over almost on our beam-ends.