therlands.

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 thou