While the Spaniards were thus busied, a noble galleon, having on board the commander of the Andalusian fleet, got his ship into collision with two or three others, carried away the mainmast, and lay crippled and helpless at the mercy of the English. The booming of the signals of distress only served to draw the more attention to his helpless situation, and brought down upon him, not the expected aid, but a couple of stout English ships, Hawkins in the one, and Frobisher in the other, pouring in a fierce cannonade, to which Valdez-the Andalusian-responded as well as he was able. He did not surrender till the following morning, when he struck to the Revenge, and was sent on board Drake's flag ship.

Thus the first day's adventure of the Invincible Armada had scarcely borne out its presumptuous title. Two of the Spanish galleys had been captured by the slaves who laboured at the oars, another had been lost; the flag ships of the Guipuzcoan and of the Andalusian squadrons, with an admiral, one hundred thousand ducats, and nearly five hundred men in all, had been destroyed. The whole fleet had been outmanoeuvred, out-sailed, thoroughly maltreated by the English. Affairs were not so prosperous nor so promising as they appeared to be when the benison was spoken in the Lisbon waters.

Throughout Monday, the 1st of August, the Spanish fleet sailed leisurely along the English coasts, the queen's fleet offering no obstruction to their course, but hovering at a moderate distance to windward. The Duke of Medina sent off a sloop to the Duke of Parma to inform him of the position of the Armada, and request instruction as to his own movements. Dissatisfied, also, with the discipline of his fleet, Medina took occasion to send a serjeant-major with written sailing directions on board each ship in the Armada, with express orders to hang every captain, without appeal or consultation, who should leave the position assigned to him; and the hangman was sent with the sergeant-major to ensure immediate attention to these encouraging arrangements.

On Tuesday, by about five in the morning, the Armada lay between Portland Bill and St. Alban's Head, and by the shifting of the wind gained an advantage over the English. Hitherto the latter had been able to follow the Spanish fleet, to harass their rear without giving battle; now they were exposed to assault, and the Spaniards were not slow to take advantage of this circumstance. A long and spirited action ensued. Howard, in his little Ark Royal, "the odd ship of the world for all conditions," was engaged at different times with the larger of the Spanish

vessels; all the twelve Apostles, or rather the galleons called by their names, bore down upon her, and thundered their saltpetred sermons into the ears of the heretic English. St. Mark, St. Luke, St. Matthew, St. Philip, St. John, St. James, St. John Baptist, St. Martin, were engaged pell mell with vessels bearing no less profane names than the Lion, the Bull, the Bear, the Tiger, the Dreadnought, the Victory, the Revenge, the Triumph. The noise of battle rang loud and clear along the south coast, and many a boat load and ship load of gallant volunteers responded to the inviting sound by pushing off to the help of the English fleet. The Dorsetshire gentlemen and others emulated each other in their zeal to share in the fight, and went off as merrily as to a wedding. So long as there was powder and shot the English kept up the fire, warily tacking occasionally to escape boarding, and thus prevented too close an encounter until the wind shifted, and they regained the advantage of the weather-gage. Modern artillery, accustomed to target practice, would have been sorely vexed to see the waste of shot on board both Spanish and English fleets. They pelted each other warmly, but few shots told; this was especially the case with the Spaniards, whose vessels, rising high out of the water, sent their shot clean over the English craft. But if the English were almost as bad as the Spaniards in artillery practice, they were more than a match for them in seamanship. In.vain the unwieldy hulks and galleons attempted to grapple with their light-winged foes,— foes that damaged their sails and gearing, splintered their masts, and then danced lightly away over the blue waters. And thus continued throughout the day "a sharp and a long fight."

Throughout the day the Spaniards made but little progress, but in the night they held on their course for Calais, closely pursued by the English fleet, which had been divided into four squadrons, under Howard, Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher. On the Wednesday nothing of importance occurred; there was some slight cannonading with slender results; and on the Thursday both the Spanish and English fleets were off the Isle of Wight. It was a holy day with the Spaniards,-a day sacred to their patron saint, St. Jago de Compostella. Encouraged by the tradition of former victories won through his intercession, the Spanish galleys and three of the four great galeasses-the fourth had been seriously damaged on the preceding day-prepared to attack their antagonists, and, nothing loth, Frobisher in the Triumph, with some other vessels, advanced to the encounter. Frobisher fought stoutly, but an overpowering force having

gathered round him, he must in the end have succumbed, had not Howard, discerning his lieutenant's peril, swept into the heart of the battle; and his brother in the Golden Lion, Lord Sheffield in the White Bear, Barker in the Victory, Fenner in the Leicester, coming merrily up, he engaged the enormous flag-ships of Medina Sidonia, Recalde, Mexia, and Almanza. Then the fight grew hot, the English gunners cut to pieces the rigging and top-hawser of the Spanish galeasses, and the musketeers maintained a constant fire of arquebusry, until the wary Lord High Admiral, having inflicted a great amount of injury, and being unwilling to risk the fortunes of England in too close a conflict, gave the signal for retreat, and caused the Ark Royal to be towed out of action.

On the following day-Friday, a bright, warm, beautiful day-the Lord Admiral Howard signalled for his chief officers, and knighted Marten Frobisher, John Hawkins, Roger Townsend, Lord Thomas Howard, and Lord Edmund Sheffield, on the deck of the Ark Royal. Never was knighthood better deserved. "Truly," said John Hawkins when he rose after receiving the accolade, "truly my old woman will scarcely know herself again, when folks call her my lady."

Still sailing slowly onward to its place of rendezvous, the Spanish Armada pursued its course, and on Saturday, the 6th of August, dropped anchor in the Calais roads.

Lord Henry Seymour, with a squadron of sixteen ships, lay between Dungeness and Folkestone, watching both for the Spanish and the English fleet, but as yet having obtained no information of either. Being short of provisions, he thought it a fair opportunity to run into the Downs and victual; but before he could accomplish his purpose, a pinnace arrived from the Lord Admiral with orders for him to hold himself in readiness, to make sail, and bear for the French coast. But the wind was so light that it was seven in the evening before he could cross the Channel and come within sight of the Armada and the English fleet. Having completed his junction with the English, the united fleet bore down to within a mile and a half of the Spaniards, and there dropped anchor, waiting-as their opponents were waiting-for the appearance of the great Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma.

"Never," says Mr. Motley, "since England was England, had such a sight been seen as now revealed itself in these narrow straits between Dover and Calais. Along that long low sandy shore, and quite within the range of the Calais fortifications, one hundred and thirty Spanish

ships-the greater number of them the largest and most heavily armed in the world, lay face to face, and scarcely out of cannon shot, with one hundred and fifty English sloops and frigates, the strongest and swiftest that the island could furnish, and commanded by men whose exploits had rung through the world.

"Further along the coast, invisible, but known to be performing a more perilous and vital service, was a squadron of Dutch vessels of all sizes, lining both the inner and outer edges of the sand banks of the Flemish coast, and swarming in all the estuaries and inlets of that intricate and dangerous cruising ground between Dunkerk and Walcheren. These fleets of Holland and Zeland, numbering some one hundred and fifty

galleons, sloops, and flyboats, under Warmond, Nassau, Van der Does, de Moor and Rosendad, lay patiently blockading every possible egress from Newport or Graveline, or Sluys, or Flushing, or Dunkerk, and longing to grapple with the Duke of Parma, so soon as his fleet of gunboats and hoys, packed with his Spanish and Italian veterans, should venture to set forth upon the sea for their long prepared exploit.

seas.

"It was a pompous spectacle that midsummer night upon those narrow The moon, which was at the full, was calmly rising upon a scene of anxious expectation. Would she not be looking by the morrow's night upon a subjugated England, a re-enslaved Holland-upon the downfall of civil and religious liberty? Those ships of Spain which lay there with

their banners waving in the moonlight, discharging salvoes of anticipated triumph and filling the air with strains of insolent music, would they not by daybreak be moving straight to their purpose, bearing the conquerors of the world to the scene of their cherished hope?

"That English fleet, too, which rode there at anchor, so anxiously on the watch would that swarm of nimble, lightly-handled, but slender vessels, which had held their own hitherto in hurried and desultory skirmishes, be able to cope with their great antagonists, now that the moment had arrived for the death grapple? Would not Howard, Drake, Frobisher, Seymour, Winter, and Hawkins be swept out of the Strait at last, yielding an open passage to Medina, Oquendo, Recalde, and Farnese? Would those Hollanders and Zelanders cruising so vigilantly among their treacherous shallows, dare to maintain their post, now that the terrible 'Holofernese' with his invincible legion was resolved to come forth ?"

Upon the prowess of these Hollanders and Zelanders the safety of England depended. If their vigilance was eluded, their strength defied and overcome, if once Duke Parma united his forces with the Spanish fleet, the fate of England, Holland, the Protestant liberties of the world, were sealed.

So far as the English fleet had yet engaged the Invincible Armada, they had been tolerably secure. There had been no regular action; they had hung upon the skirts of the foes, had pelted them with shot from a convenient distance, had made the best use of skilful seamanship and a favourable wind, but they were now to enter on a general engagement— to fight out the battle, face to face. As Howard, in company with Winter, stood on the deck of his vessel, gazed on the pompous display of strength, and compared-as he could not help comparing-the insignificance of his own fleet with that of the Spaniards in point of strength, weight, and numbers, the result, even to his brave heart, seemed almost hopeless. But in a happy moment, Winter recalled the story he had heard of the fire-ships of Antwerp; their inventor, Gianibelli, was then in England, helping to strengthen the fortifications of the Thames. What if, by a stratagem, they could create a panic among those who were so confident of victory! It was a suggestion worthy of consideration; certainly there was no time to prepare vessels so costly, so elaborate, so destructive as those which might have saved Antwerp, but still something of the kind might be attempted. Howard and Winter sat together in the state cabin, and talked over the probability of success. Suddenly