I really could not tell you what happened for the next five hours—I was so dazed and numbed—but I found myself going down into a boat with a lot more of our mids., and we crawled up a ladder on board the _Hercules_. We huddled up in a corner of her gun-room, and they brought us something to eat, but it nearly made me sick to look at it. The _Hercules_ mids. let us alone and didn’t ask any questions, and for hours we sat there, covered with dirt and smoke, till some one led us away and made us clean ourselves. Some one lent me a pair of pyjamas, and I crawled into a hammock, but daren’t shut my eyes, and had to get out and sit close to a light. I don’t know how long I sat there, but one of the _Hercules’_ doctors found me, and lifted me back into my hammock. He injected something into my arm, and was going away, but I clutched his sleeve—I couldn’t be left alone—and then cried till I thought I should die. *CHAPTER XV* *The Santa Cruz Fleet again* _Written by Sub-Lieutenant William Wilson, R.N._ For days after that awful morning we seemed half stunned. We had left El Castellar the night before, as smart a ship and as cheery a lot of officers and men as there were in the Navy, and fifteen minutes after _La Buena Presidente_ fired her first broadside the _Hector_ was a complete wreck above the waterline, and was so badly holed beneath it that she only managed with difficulty to keep herself afloat and crawl back into shallow water. Fortunately one anchor and cable had not been destroyed, and we anchored under El Castellar, the _Hercules_ anchoring as close as possible in case it should become necessary for us to abandon the ship. She sent working parties aboard at once, and we eventually managed to make the _Hector_ fairly water-tight, pump her dry, and get her on an even keel again. But that was not until the third day, and those three days and nights have always been like a horrible nightmare. We could not get away from things—the stump of the foretopmast and that single copper voice-pipe, sticking out where the fore control had been, to remind us that Montague, Pearson the A.P., Marchant the cheery little Clerk, and the ’Angel’ had simply disappeared—blown to pieces; the stump of the after 9.2, inside the turret of which Barton had been killed, and the wreckage of the bridge, on top of the starboard foremost turret, which had crushed poor Bigge. It was two days before it was possible to cut a way into the wreck of the Forlorn Hope’s turret and get out what remained of him and his crew, and really I don’t know what we should have done had we not had to work, hour after hour, day after day, trying to make the _Hector_ seaworthy, and ready to tackle _La Buena Presidente_ again.