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 Ludar, who would come from the other quarter, where the Duke's ship was; when once again I saw the figure, this time near enough to know it was assuredly a man who, between each few strokes he took, waved a hand above his head.
I was down the mast in a twinkling, caring nought if I were to swing at the yard-arm within an hour, and ran wildly to the quarter-deck.
"Sir Don!" shouted I, breaking in upon him and his lieutenants, "by your leave, yonder comes Sir Ludar, swimming for his life." The Don rounded on me with knitted brows.

But I cared not.
"Put out a boat to save him, or he is lost!" I cried, "Has your night aloft, sirrah, taught you no better manners ?" said he.