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.