their cart),
returned for answer that he would "thereafter depend wholly upon her
majesty, and serve her fortune against all the world; and that he only
wanted now two of her majesty's yeoman prickers, and a couple of her
grooms of the deer." The Spaniard was not sorry on the whole for the
catastrophe; for all that had kept him from conquering England long ago
was the fear lest, after it was done, he might have had to put the crown
thereof on Mary's head, instead of his own. But Mary's death was as
convenient a stalking-horse to him as to the pope; and now the Armada
was coming in earnest.

Elizabeth began negotiating; but fancy not that she does nothing more,
as the following letter testifies, written about midsummer, 1587.

"F. Drake to Captain Amyas Leigh. This with haste.

"DEAR LAD,

"As I said to her most glorious majesty, I say to you now. There are two
ways of facing an enemy. The one to stand off, and cry, 'Try that again,
and I'll strike thee'; the other to strike him first, and then, 'Try
that at all, and I'll strike thee again.' Of which latter counsel her
majesty so far approves, that I go forthwith (tell it not in Gath) down
the coast, to singe the king of Spain's beard (so I termed it to her
majesty, she laughing), in which if I leave so much as a fishing-boat
afloat from the Groyne unto Cadiz, it will not be with my good will, who
intend that if he come this year, he shall come by swimming and not by
sailing. So if you are still the man I have known you, bring a good ship
round to Plymouth within the month, and away with me for hard blows and
hard money, the feel of both of which you know pretty well by now.

"Thine lovingly,

"F. Drake."

Amyas clutched his locks over this letter, and smoked more tobacco the
day he got it than had ever before been consumed at once in England. But
he kept true to his promise; and this was his reply:--

"Amyas Leigh to the Worshipful Sir F. Drake, Admiral of her Majesty's
Fleet in Plymouth.

"MOST HONORED SIR,

"A magician keeps me here, in bilboes for which you have no picklock;
namely, a mother who forbids. The loss is mine: but Antichrist I can
fight any year (for he will not die this bout, nor the next), while my
mother--but I will not trouble your patience more than to ask from you
to get me news, if you can, from any prisoners of one Don Guzman Maria
Magdalena Sotomayor de Soto; whether he is in Spain or in the Indies;
and what the villain does