'_I_ knowed Frankie would never let 'em smell London smoke, but plenty good men in Rye was two-three minded about the upshot. 'Twas the noise of the gun-fire terrified us. The wind favoured it our way from off behind the Isle of Wight. It made a mutter like, which growed and growed, and by the end of a week women was shruckin' in the streets. Then _they_ come sliddering past Fairlight in a great smoky pat vambrished with red gun-fire, and our ships flying forth and ducking in again. The smoke-pat sliddered over to the French shore, so I knowed Frankie was edging the Spanishers toward they Dutch sands where he was master. I says to my Aunt, "The smoke's thinning out. I lay Frankie's just about scrapin' his hold for a few last rounds shot. 'Tis time for me to go." '"Never in them clothes," she says. "Do on the doublet I bought you to be made burgess in, and don't you shame this day." 'So I mucked it on, and my chain, and my stiffed Dutch breeches and all. '"I be comin', too," she says from her chamber, and forth she come pavisanding like a peacock--stuff, ruff, stomacher and all. She was a notable woman.' 'But how did you go? You haven't told us,' said Una. 'In my own ship--but half-share was my Aunt's. In the _Antony of Rye_ to be sure; and not empty-handed. I'd been loadin' her for three days with the pick of our yard. We was ballasted on cannon-shot of all three sizes; and iron rods and straps for his carpenters; and a nice passel of clean three-inch oak planking and hide breech-ropes for his cannon, and gubs of good oakum, and bolts o' canvas, and all the sound rope in the yard. What else could I ha' done? _I_ knowed what he'd need most after a week's such work. I'm a shipbuilder, little maid. 'We'd a fair slant o' wind off Dungeness, and we crept on till it fell light airs and puffed out. The Spanishers was all in a huddle over by Calais, and our ships was strawed about mending 'emselves like dogs lickin' bites. Now and then a Spanisher would fire from a low port, and the ball 'ud troll across the flat swells, but both sides was finished fightin' for that tide. 'The first ship we foreslowed on, her breast-works was crushed in, an' men was shorin' 'em up. She said nothing. The next was a black pinnace, his pumps clackin' middling quick, and he said nothing. But the third, mending shot holes, he spoke out plenty. I asked him where Mus' Drake might be, and a shiny-suited man on the poop looked down into us, and saw what we carried. '"Lay alongside, you!" he says. "We'll take that all." '"'Tis for Mus' Drake," I says, keeping away lest his size should lee the wind out of my sails. '"Hi! Ho! Hither! We're Lord High Admiral of England! Come alongside, or we'll hang ye," he says. ''Twas none of my affairs who he was if he wasn't Frankie, and while he talked so hot I slipped behind a green-painted ship with her top-sides splintered. We was all in the middest of 'em then.