The moment it became certain that the fight was over I sank down upon the breech of the nearest gun, mopped the blood and perspiration from my face, and tried to understand the scene of ruin and carnage that surrounded me; for, with the cessation of the turmoil and excitement of battle, everything seemed suddenly to assume the inconsequence and unreality of a dream. I could not quite realise that the shot-torn, blood-bespattered wreck over which my gaze wandered wonderingly was the erstwhile smart and dainty little schooner of which I had been so proud, or that those maimed and disfigured forms lying broadcast about the deck were really dead men; also, my head ached most consumedly, there was a loud buzzing in my ears, the silence--or rather the comparative silence that succeeded to the continuous, sharp explosions of the guns, the excited shouts of the men, and the cries of the wounded--seemed weird, uncanny, unnatural; for now there were no sounds save the wash of the water alongside, an intermittent groaning--cut into now and then by the sharp cry of a man under the hands of the surgeon--coming up through the smashed skylight, and the low murmur of the men speaking to each other from time to time where they had flung themselves down exhausted between the guns. The fact was that I was suffering from the reaction that was inevitable after so fierce and protracted a fight--the battle having lasted for over an hour--and I felt that I must bestir myself or I should become light-headed, or hysterical, or something equally foolish. I, therefore, rose to my feet, called to the steward to bring me a glass of water--the water-cask which usually stood on deck having been smashed to staves early in the fight--and then gave orders for the men to secure the guns. I also sent young Hinton down below to ascertain and bring me the particulars of our casualties. Thus far we had all been much too strenuously engaged, and our attention too fully occupied, to take note of the weather; but now, as I glanced round at the lowering heavens and observed their threatening aspect, I bethought me that, fatigued though we all were, there still remained an abundance of work to be done in preparation for the storm that was evidently brewing. For the sky was now completely overcast with a pall of dense, livid, purplish, slate-coloured cloud that clearly portended a gale; the wind was coming in hot, fierce, intermittent puffs that scourged the sea into miniature foam-flecked waves for a few seconds at a time and then dropped almost to a calm again, and upon looking at the barometer I saw that the mercury had fallen almost half-an-inch since I had last looked at it shortly before the commencement of the fight. The Spaniard had vanished, and the pirate schooner was still running away to leeward.