e dream of his father, Charles V,
would certainly come true, and he would be the master of the world.
France also stood in his way, but only by land; and if he had England
and England's sea-power he could make short work of France. His having
Portugal gave him much that he needed for his "Invincible Armada":
plenty of ships, sailors at least as good as his own, new ports and new
islands, like the Azores, and the "wealth of All the Indies"--for he
now had the Portuguese trade with the Indies as well as his own with
the West.

Luckily for England, Philip was a landsman, no soldier, and very slow.
So England struck first, but at New Spain, not, Old, because Elizabeth
would not have open war if she could help it. She had enemies in
Scotland, enemies in France, a few at home, and millions in Spain.
Besides, she was cleverer at playing off one against the other than in
managing a big war; and, like most people everywhere, even in our own
sea-girt Empire now, she never quite understood how to make war at sea.

In 1585 London was all agog about Sir Francis Drake again; for he was
to command the "Indies Voyage" against New Spain, with Frobisher, of
North-West-Passage fame, as his Vice-Admiral, and Knollys, the Queen's
own cousin, as Rear-Admiral. There were twenty-one ships and
twenty-three hundred men; with Carleill, a first-class general, to
command the soldiers ashore. Drake's crew of the _Golden Hind_ came
forward to a man, among them gigantic Tom Moone, the lion of the
boarding parties. It is quite likely that Shakespeare went down with
the crowds of Londoners who saw the fleet set sail from Woolwich; for
the famous London vessel, _Tiger_, which he mentions both in _Macbeth_
and in _Twelfth Night_, was one of Drake's fleet.

Drake's written plan proves that he was not only a daring raider but a
very great admiral as well. It marked down for attack all the places
in New Spain the taking of which would knock the sea trade there to
pieces, because they were the same by sea as railway junctions are by
land. More than this, he planned to hold Havana, so that the junctions
he destroyed could not be made to work again, as from there he could
pounce on working parties anywhere else.

Drake first swooped down on San Domingo in Hayti, battering the walls
from the sea while Carleill attacked them by land. The Spaniards had
been on their guard, so no treasure was found. Drake therefore put the
town to ransom and sent his M