Then he told me how, missing me after the battle, and seeing the mast on which I had perched shot away, he had mourned for me as dead, and, for my sake, taken a gun with a good-will against my Queen. How, when after Gravelines the south wind sprang up and the Invincible Armada began to run, the _Rata_ sailed as rear-guard and bore the brunt of the few English ships that dogged them. How it was resolved by the Spanish captains, Don Alonzo himself not protesting, that the shortest way back to Spain now lay by way of the Orkneys and the Atlantic. How, thereupon, that glorious fleet trailed in a long draggled line northward, never looking behind them, even when the Englishmen one by one drew off and abandoned the chase. How, after a while, when they looked out one morning they found the _Rata_ staggering through the stormy northern seas alone. "'Twas a sad sight," said Ludar. "You would not have known the queenly vessel we had met scarce a month before off Ushant. Her main-mast clean gone, her tackle dishevelled as a wood-nymph's hair; with flags and sails and pennons blown away, guns rusted in their ports, and the very helm refusing to turn. The bells, all save the dismal storm bell in the prows, were silent; the priests had crawled miserably to their holes. No one read aloud the King's proclamation; and even the gallants of Spain sat limp and listless, looking seaward, never saying a word but to salute and cheer their beloved Don, or talk in whispers of the sunny hills of Spain. "Captain Desmond, the one man on board who, after you, was my friend, had died in the fight off Gravelines. I had not the heart or the wish to seek new comrades; and, save when the brave Don himself gave me a passing word of cheer, I forgot what it was to speak or listen. "Well, when off Cape Wrath (just as we sighted a few of our scattered consorts and hoped for food and comfort), a new storm overtook us from the north-east and drove us headlong, under bare poles, southward again. We none of us, I think, cared if the next gust sent us to the bottom. Many a weary young Don did I see fling himself in despair overboard; and but that we daily drew nearer to Ireland, I had been tempted to do the same. "How long we drove I forget, or what wrecks we passed; but one day we found ourselves flung into a great bay, where, for a while, we held on to our anchors against the storm. But the _Rata_ had lost her best thews and muscles at Calais, and, after two days, dragged towards the shore and fell miserably over, a wreck. "We came to land in boats, or on floating spars, but only to meet worse hardships than on sea; for the savages on the coast, aided by your gallant Englishmen, fell on us, defenceless as we were, stripped us of all we had, and drove us from the shore in an old crank of a galleon, which, if it carried us thus far, did so only by the grace of God and His saints." "And where be we now?" I asked.