“Why not, then, my lord? Good news should be welcomed with good wine. Frank, send down to the sexton, and set the bells a-ringing to cheer up all honest hearts. Why, my lord, if it were not for the gravity of my office, I could dance a galliard for joy!”

“Well, you may dance, port admiral: but I must go and plan, but God give to all captains such a heart as yours this day!”

“And God give all generals such a head as yours! Come, Frank Drake, we’ll play the game out before we move. It will be two good days before we shall be fit to tackle them, so an odd half-hour don’t matter.”

“I must command the help of your counsel, vice-admiral,” said Lord Charles, turning to Drake.

“And it’s this, my good lord,” said Drake, looking up, as he aimed his bowl. “They’ll come soon enough for us to show them sport, and yet slow enough for us to be ready; so let no man hurry himself. And as example is better than precept, here goes.”

Lord Howard shrugged his shoulders, and departed, knowing two things: first, that to move Drake was to move mountains; and next, that when the self-taught hero did bestir himself, he would do more work in an hour than any one else in a day. So he departed, followed hastily by most of the captains; and Drake said in a low voice to Hawkins:

“Does he think we are going to knock about on a lee-shore all the afternoon and run our noses at night—and dead up-wind, too—into the Dons’ mouths? No, Jack, my friend. Let Orlando-Furioso-punctilio-fire- eaters go and get their knuckles rapped. The following game is the game, and not the meeting one. The dog goes after the sheep, and not afore them, lad. Let them go by, and go by, and stick to them well to windward, and pick up stragglers, and pickings, too, Jack—the prizes, Jack!”

“Trust my old eyes for not being over-quick at seeing signals, if I be hanging in the skirts of a fat-looking Don. We’m the eagles, Drake; and where the carcase is, is our place, eh?”

And so the two old sea-dogs chatted on, while their companions dropped off one by one, and only Amyas remained.

“Eh, Captain Leigh, where’s my boy Dick?”

“Gone off with his lordship, Sir John.”

“On his punctilios too, I suppose, the young slashed-breeks. He’s half a Don, that fellow, with his fine scholarship, and his fine manners, and his fine clothes. He’ll get a taking down before he dies, unless he mends. Why ain’t you gone too, sir?”

“I follow my leader,” said Amyas, filling his pipe.

“Well said, my big man,” quoth Drake. “If I could lead you round the world, I can lead you up Channel, can’t I?—Eh? my little bantam-cock of the Orinoco? Drink, lad! You’re over-sad to-day.”

“Not a whit,” said Amyas. “Only I can’t help wondering whether I shall find him after all.”

“Whom? That Don? We’ll find him for you, if he’s in the fleet. We’ll squeeze it out of our prisoners somehow. Eh, Hawkins? I thought all the captains had promised to send you news if they heard of him.”

“Ay, but it’s ill looking for a needle in a haystack. But I shall find him. I am a coward to doubt it,” said Amyas, setting his teeth.

“There, vice-admiral, you’re beaten, and that’s the rubber. Pay up three dollars, old high-flyer, and go and earn more, like an honest adventurer.”

“Well,” said Drake, as he pulled out his purse, “we’ll walk down now, and see about these young hot-heads. As I live, they are setting to tow the ships out already! Breaking the men’s backs over-night, to make them fight the lustier in the morning! Well, well, they haven’t sailed round the world, Jack Hawkins.”

“Or had to run home from San Juan d’Ulloa with half a crew.

“Well, if we haven’t to run out with half crews. I saw a sight of our lads drunk about this morning.”

“The more reason for waiting till they be sober. Besides, if everybody’s caranting about to once each after his own men, nobody’ll find nothing in such a scrimmage as that. Bye, bye, Uncle Martin. We’m going to blow the Dons up now in earnest.”

CHAPTER XXXI

THE GREAT ARMADA

“Britannia needs no bulwarks,

No towers along the steep,

Her march is o’er the mountain wave,

Her home is on the deep.”

CAMPBELL, Ye Mariners of England.

And now began that great sea-fight which was to determine whether Popery and despotism, or Protestantism and freedom, were the law which God had appointed for the half of Europe, and the whole of future America. It is a twelve days’ epic, worthy, as I said in the beginning of this book, not of dull prose, but of the thunder-roll of Homer’s verse: but having to tell it, I must do my best, rather using, where I can, the words of contemporary authors than my own.

“The Lord High Admirall of England, sending a pinnace before, called the Defiance, denounced war by discharging her ordnance; and presently approaching with in musquet-shot, with much thundering out of his own ship, called the Arkroyall (alias the Triumph), first set upon the admirall’s, as he thought, of the Spaniards (but it was Alfonso de Leon’s ship). Soon after, Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher played stoutly with their ordnance on the hindmost squadron, which was commanded by Recalde.” The Spaniards soon discover the superior “nimbleness of the English ships;” and Recalde’s squadron, finding that they are getting more than they give, in spite of his endeavors, hurry forward to join the rest of the fleet. Medina the Admiral, finding his ships scattering fast, gathers them into a half-moon; and the Armada tries to keep solemn way forward, like a stately herd of buffaloes, who march on across the prairie, disdaining to notice the wolves which snarl around their track. But in vain. These are no wolves, but cunning hunters, swiftly horsed, and keenly armed, and who will “shamefully shuffle” (to use Drake’s own expression) that vast herd from the Lizard to Portland, from Portland to Calais Roads; and who, even in this short two hours’ fight, have made many a Spaniard question the boasted invincibleness of this Armada.

One of the four great galliasses is already riddled with shot, to the great disarrangement of her “pulpits, chapels,” and friars therein assistant. The fleet has to close round her, or Drake and Hawkins will sink her; in effecting which manoeuvre, the “principal galleon of Seville,” in which are Pedro de Valdez and a host of blue-blooded Dons, runs foul of her neighbor, carries away her foremast, and is, in spite of Spanish chivalry, left to her fate. This does not look like victory, certainly. But courage! though Valdez be left behind, “our Lady,” and the saints, and the bull Caena Domini (dictated by one whom I dare not name here), are with them still, and it were blasphemous to doubt. But in the meanwhile, if they have fared no better than this against a third of the Plymouth fleet, how will they fare when those forty belated ships, which are already whitening the blue between them and the Mewstone, enter the scene to play their part?

So ends the first day; not an English ship, hardly a man, is hurt. It has destroyed for ever, in English minds, the prestige of boastful Spain. It has justified utterly the policy which the good Lord Howard had adopted by Raleigh’s and Drake’s advice, of keeping up a running fight, instead of “clapping ships together without consideration,” in which case, says Raleigh, “he had been lost, if he had not been better advised than a great many malignant fools were, who found fault with his demeanor.”

Be that as it may, so ends the first day, in which Amyas and the other Bideford ships have been right busy for two hours, knocking holes in a huge galleon, which carries on her poop a maiden with a wheel, and bears the name of Sta. Catharina. She had a coat of arms on the flag at her sprit, probably those of the commandant of soldiers; but they were shot away early in the fight, so Amyas cannot tell whether they were De Soto’s or not. Nevertheless, there is plenty of time for private revenge; and Amyas, called off at last by the admiral’s signal, goes to bed and sleeps soundly.

But ere he has been in his hammock an hour, he is awakened by Cary’s coming down to ask for orders.

“We were to follow Drake’s lantern, Amyas; but where it is, I can’t see, unless he has been taken up aloft there among the stars for a new Drakium Sidus.”

Amyas turns out grumbling: but no lantern is to be seen; only a sudden explosion and a great fire on board some Spaniard, which is gradually got under, while they have to lie-to the whole night long, with nearly the whole fleet.

The next morning finds them off Torbay; and Amyas is hailed by a pinnace, bringing a letter from Drake, which (saving the spelling, which was somewhat arbitrary, like most men’s in those days) ran somewhat thus:—

“DEAR LAD,—I have been wool-gathering all night after five great hulks, which the Pixies transfigured overnight into galleons, and this morning again into German merchantmen. I let them go with my blessing; and coming back, fell in (God be thanked!) with Valdez’ great galleon; and in it good booty, which the Dons his fellows had left behind, like faithful and valiant comrades, and the Lord Howard had let slip past him, thinking her deserted by her crew. I have sent to Dartmouth a sight of noblemen and gentlemen, maybe a half-hundred; and Valdez himself, who when I sent my pinnace aboard must needs stand on his punctilios, and propound conditions. I answered him, I had no time to tell with him; if he would needs die, then I was the very man for him; if he would live, then, buena querra. He sends again, boasting that he was Don Pedro Valdez, and that it stood not with his honor, and that of the Dons in his company. I replied, that for my part, I was Francis Drake, and my matches burning. Whereon he finds in my name salve for the wounds of his own, and comes aboard, kissing my fist, with Spanish lies of holding himself fortunate that he had fallen into the hands of fortunate Drake, and much more, which he might have kept to cool his porridge. But I have much news from him (for he is a leaky tub); and among others, this, that your Don Guzman is aboard of the Sta. Catharina, commandant of her soldiery, and has his arms flying at her sprit, beside Sta. Catharina at the poop, which is a maiden with a wheel, and is a lofty built ship of 3 tier of ordnance, from which God preserve you, and send you like luck with.

“Your deare Friend and Admirall,

“F. Drake.

“She sails in this squadron of Recalde. The Armada was minded to smoke us out of Plymouth; and God’s grace it was they tried not: but their orders from home are too strait, and so the slaves fight like a bull in a tether, no farther than their rope, finding thus the devil a hard master, as do most in the end. They cannot compass our quick handling and tacking, and take us for very witches. So far so good, and better to come. You and I know the length of their foot of old. Time and light will kill any hare, and they will find it a long way from Start to Dunkirk.”

“The admiral is in a gracious humor, Leigh, to have vouchsafed you so long a letter.”

“St. Catherine! why, that was the galleon we hammered all yesterday!” said Amyas, stamping on the deck.

“Of course it was. Well, we shall find her again, doubt not. That cunning old Drake! how he has contrived to line his own pockets, even though he had to keep the whole fleet waiting for him.”

“He has given the lord high admiral the dor, at all events.”

“Lord Howard is too high-hearted to stop and plunder, Papist though he is, Amyas.”

Amyas answered by a growl, for he worshipped Drake, and was not too just to Papists.

The fleet did not find Lord Howard till nightfall; he and Lord Sheffield had been holding on steadfastly the whole night after the Spanish lanterns, with two ships only. At least there was no doubt now of the loyalty of English Roman Catholics, and indeed, throughout the fight, the Howards showed (as if to wipe out the slurs which had been cast on their loyalty by fanatics) a desperate courage, which might have thrust less prudent men into destruction, but led them only to victory. Soon a large Spaniard drifts by, deserted and partly burnt. Some of the men are for leaving their place to board her; but Amyas stoutly refuses. He has “come out to fight, and not to plunder; so let the nearest ship to her have her luck without grudging.” They pass on, and the men pull long faces when they see the galleon snapped up by their next neighbor, and towed off to Weymouth, where she proves to be the ship of Miguel d’Oquenda, the vice-admiral, which they saw last night, all but blown up by some desperate Netherland gunner, who, being “misused,” was minded to pay off old scores on his tyrants.

And so ends the second day; while the Portland rises higher and clearer every hour. The next morning finds them off the island. Will they try Portsmouth, though they have spared Plymouth? The wind has shifted to the north, and blows clear and cool off the white-walled downs of Weymouth Bay. The Spaniards turn and face the English. They must mean to stand off and on until the wind shall change, and then to try for the Needles. At least, they shall have some work to do before they round Purbeck Isle.

The English go to the westward again: but it is only to return on the opposite tack; and now begin a series of manoeuvres, each fleet trying to get the wind of the other; but the struggle does not last long, and ere noon the English fleet have slipped close-hauled between the Armada and the land, and are coming down upon them right before the wind.

And now begins a fight most fierce and fell. “And fight they did confusedly, and with variable fortunes; while, on the one hand, the English manfully rescued the ships of London, which were hemmed in by the Spaniards; and, on the other side, the Spaniards as stoutly delivered Recalde being in danger.” “Never was heard such thundering of ordnance on both sides, which notwithstanding from the Spaniards flew for the most part over the English without harm. Only Cock, an Englishman” (whom Prince claims, I hope rightfully, as a worthy of Devon), “died with honor in the midst of the enemies in a small ship of his. For the English ships, being far the lesser, charged the enemy with marvellous agility; and having discharged their broadsides, flew forth presently into the deep, and levelled their shot directly, without missing, at those great and unwieldy Spanish ships.” “This was the most furious and bloody skirmish of all” (though ending only, it seems, in the capture of a great Venetian and some small craft), “in which the lord admiral fighting amidst his enemies’ fleet, and seeing one of his captains afar off (Fenner by name, he who fought the seven Portugals at the Azores), cried, ‘O George, what doest thou? Wilt thou now frustrate my hope and opinion conceived of thee? Wilt thou forsake me now?’ With which words he being enflamed, approached, and did the part of a most valiant captain;” as, indeed, did all the rest.

Night falls upon the floating volcano; and morning finds them far past Purbeck, with the white peak of Freshwater ahead; and pouring out past the Needles, ship after ship, to join the gallant chase. For now from all havens, in vessels fitted out at their own expense, flock the chivalry of England; the Lords Oxford, Northumberland, and Cumberland, Pallavicin, Brooke, Carew, Raleigh, and Blunt, and many another honorable name, “as to a set field, where immortal fame and honor was to be attained.” Spain has staked her chivalry in that mighty cast; not a noble house of Arragon or Castile but has lent a brother or a son—and shall mourn the loss of one: and England’s gentlemen will measure their strength once for all against the Cavaliers of Spain. Lord Howard has sent forward light craft into Portsmouth for ammunition: but they will scarce return to-night, for the wind falls dead, and all the evening the two fleets drift helpless with the tide, and shout idle defiance at each other with trumpet, fife, and drum.

The sun goes down upon a glassy sea, and rises on a glassy sea again. But what day is this? The twenty-fifth, St. James’s-day, sacred to the patron saint of Spain. Shall nothing be attempted in his honor by those whose forefathers have so often seen him with their bodily eyes, charging in their van upon his snow-white steed, and scattering Paynims with celestial lance? He might have sent them, certainly, a favoring breeze; perhaps, he only means to try their faith; at least the galleys shall attack; and in their van three of the great galliasses (the fourth lies half-crippled among the fleet) thrash the sea to foam with three hundred oars apiece; and see, not St. James leading them to victory, but Lord Howard’s Triumph, his brother’s Lion, Southwell’s Elizabeth Jonas, Lord Sheffield’s Bear, Barker’s Victory, and George Fenner’s Leicester, towed stoutly out, to meet them with such salvoes of chain-shot, smashing oars, and cutting rigging, that had not the wind sprung up again toward noon, and the Spanish fleet come up to rescue them, they had shared the fate of Valdez and the Biscayan. And now the fight becomes general. Frobisher beats down the Spanish admiral’s mainmast; and, attacked himself by Mexia and Recalde, is rescued by Lord Howard; who, himself endangered in his turn, is rescued in his turn; “while after that day” (so sickened were they of the English gunnery) “no galliasse would adventure to fight.”

And so, with variable fortune, the fight thunders on the livelong afternoon, beneath the virgin cliffs of Freshwater; while myriad sea-fowl rise screaming up from every ledge, and spot with their black wings the snow-white wall of chalk; and the lone shepherd hurries down the slopes above to peer over the dizzy edge, and forgets the wheatear fluttering in his snare, while he gazes trembling upon glimpses of tall masts and gorgeous flags, piercing at times the league-broad veil of sulphur-smoke which welters far below.

So fares St. James’s-day, as Baal’s did on Carmel in old time, “Either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is on a journey; or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.” At least, the only fire by which he has answered his votaries, has been that of English cannon: and the Armada, “gathering itself into a roundel,” will fight no more, but make the best of its way to Calais, where perhaps the Guises’ faction may have a French force ready to assist them, and then to Dunkirk, to join with Parma and the great flotilla of the Netherlands.

So on, before “a fair Etesian gale,” which follows clear and bright out of the south-southwest, glide forward the two great fleets, past Brighton Cliffs and Beachy Head, Hastings and Dungeness. Is it a battle or a triumph? For by sea Lord Howard, instead of fighting is rewarding; and after Lord Thomas Howard, Lord Sheffield, Townsend, and Frobisher have received at his hands that knighthood, which was then more honorable than a peerage, old Admiral Hawkins kneels and rises up Sir John, and shaking his shoulders after the accolade, observes to the representative of majesty, that his “old woman will hardly know herself again, when folks call her My Lady.”

And meanwhile the cliffs are lined with pike-men and musketeers, and by every countryman and groom who can bear arms, led by their squires and sheriffs, marching eastward as fast as their weapons let them, towards the Dover shore. And not with them alone. From many a mile inland come down women and children, and aged folk in wagons, to join their feeble shouts, and prayers which are not feeble, to that great cry of mingled faith and fear which ascends to the throne of God from the spectators of Britain’s Salamis.

Let them pray on. The danger is not over yet, though Lord Howard has had news from Newhaven that the Guises will not stir against England, and Seymour and Winter have left their post of observation on the Flemish shores, to make up the number of the fleet to an hundred and forty sail—larger, slightly, than that of the Spanish fleet, but of not more than half the tonnage, or one third the number of men. The Spaniards are dispirited and battered, but unbroken still; and as they slide to their anchorage in Calais Roads on the Saturday evening of that most memorable week, all prudent men know well that England’s hour is come, and that the bells which will call all Christendom to church upon the morrow morn, will be either the death-knell or the triumphal peal of the Reformed faith throughout the world.

A solemn day that Sabbath must have been in country and in town. And many a light-hearted coward, doubtless, who had scoffed (as many did) at the notion of the Armada’s coming, because he dare not face the thought, gave himself up to abject fear, “as he now plainly saw and heard that of which before he would not be persuaded.” And many a brave man, too, as he knelt beside his wife and daughters, felt his heart sink to the very pavement, at the thought of what those beloved ones might be enduring a few short days hence, from a profligate and fanatical soldiery, or from the more deliberate fiendishness of the Inquisition. The massacre of St. Bartholomew, the fires of Smithfield, the immolation of the Moors, the extermination of the West Indians, the fantastic horrors of the Piedmontese persecution, which make unreadable the too truthful pages of Morland,—these were the spectres, which, not as now, dim and distant through the mist of centuries, but recent, bleeding from still gaping wounds, flitted before the eyes of every Englishman, and filled his brain and heart with fire.

He knew full well the fate in store for him and his. One false step, and the unspeakable doom which, not two generations afterwards, befell the Lutherans of Magdeburg, would have befallen every town from London to Carlisle. All knew the hazard, as they prayed that day, and many a day before and after, throughout England and the Netherlands. And none knew it better than she who was the guiding spirit of that devoted land, and the especial mark of the invaders’ fury; and who, by some Divine inspiration (as men then not unwisely held), devised herself the daring stroke which was to anticipate the coming blow.

But where is Amyas Leigh all this while? Day after day he has been seeking the Sta. Catharina in the thickest of the press, and cannot come at her, cannot even hear of her: one moment he dreads that she has sunk by night, and balked him of his prey; the next, that she has repaired her damages, and will escape him after all. He is moody, discontented, restless, even (for the first time in his life) peevish with his men. He can talk of nothing but Don Guzman; he can find no better employment, at every spare moment, than taking his sword out of the sheath, and handling it, fondling it, talking to it even, bidding it not to fail him in the day of vengeance. At last, he has sent to Squire, the armorer, for a whetstone, and, half-ashamed of his own folly, whets and polishes it in bye-corners, muttering to himself. That one fixed thought of selfish vengeance has possessed his whole mind; he forgets England’s present need, her past triumph, his own safety, everything but his brother’s blood. And yet this is the day for which he has been longing ever since he brought home that magic horn as a fifteen years boy; the day when he should find himself face to face with an invader, and that invader Antichrist himself. He has believed for years with Drake, Hawkins, Grenville, and Raleigh, that he was called and sent into the world only to fight the Spaniard: and he is fighting him now, in such a cause, for such a stake, within such battle-lists, as he will never see again: and yet he is not content, and while throughout that gallant fleet, whole crews are receiving the Communion side by side, and rising with cheerful faces to shake hands, and to rejoice that they are sharers in Britain’s Salamis, Amyas turns away from the holy elements.

“I cannot communicate, Sir John. Charity with all men? I hate, if ever man hated on earth.”

“You hate the Lord’s foes only, Captain Leigh.”

“No, Jack, I hate my own as well.”

“But no one in the fleet, sir?”

“Don’t try to put me off with the same Jesuit’s quibble which that false knave Parson Fletcher invented for one of Doughty’s men, to drug his conscience withal when he was plotting against his own admiral. No, Jack, I hate one of whom you know; and somehow that hatred of him keeps me from loving any human being. I am in love and charity with no man, Sir John Brimblecombe—not even with you! Go your ways in God’s name, sir! and leave me and the devil alone together, or you’ll find my words are true.”

Jack departed with a sigh, and while the crew were receiving the Communion on deck, Amyas sate below in the cabin sharpening his sword, and after it, called for a boat and went on board Drake’s ship to ask news of the Sta. Catharina, and listened scowling to the loud chants and tinkling bells, which came across the water from the Spanish fleet. At last, Drake was summoned by the lord admiral, and returned with a secret commission, which ought to bear fruit that night; and Amyas, who had gone with him, helped him till nightfall, and then returned to his own ship as Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, to the joy and glory of every soul on board, except his moody self.

So there, the livelong summer Sabbath-day, before the little high-walled town and the long range of yellow sandhills, lie those two mighty armaments, scowling at each other, hardly out of gunshot. Messenger after messenger is hurrying towards Bruges to the Duke of Parma, for light craft which can follow these nimble English somewhat better than their own floating castles; and, above all, entreating him to put to sea at once with all his force. The duke is not with his forces at Dunkirk, but on the future field of Waterloo, paying his devotions to St. Mary of Halle in Hainault, in order to make all sure in his Pantheon, and already sees in visions of the night that gentle-souled and pure-lipped saint, Cardinal Allen, placing the crown of England on his head. He returns for answer, first, that his victual is not ready; next, that his Dutch sailors, who have been kept at their post for many a week at the sword’s point, have run away like water; and thirdly, that over and above all, he cannot come, so “strangely provided” of great ordnance and musketeers are those five-and-thirty Dutch ships, in which round-sterned and stubborn-hearted heretics watch, like terriers at a rat’s hole, the entrance of Nieuwport and Dunkirk. Having ensured the private patronage of St. Mary of Halle, he will return to-morrow to make experience of its effects: but only hear across the flats of Dixmude the thunder of the fleets, and at Dunkirk the open curses of his officers. For while he has been praying and nothing more, the English have been praying, and something more; and all that is left for the Prince of Parma is, to hang a few purveyors, as peace offerings to his sulking army, and then “chafe,” as Drake says of him, “like a bear robbed of her whelps.”

For Lord Henry Seymour has brought Lor