to slaves, but only to hold them for ransom. Valdez
responded to Drake's politeness by kissing his hand, embracing him,
and overpowering him with magnificent compliments. He was then sent on
board the Lord Admiral, who received him with similar urbanity, and
exprest his regret that so distinguished a personage should have been
so coolly deserted by the Duke of Medina. Don Pedro then returned to
the _Revenge_, where, as the guest of Drake, he was a witness to all
subsequent events up to the 10th of August; on which day he was sent
to London with some other officers, Sir Francis claiming his ransom as
his lawful due.

Here certainly was no very triumphant beginning for the Invincible Armada.
On the very first day of their being in presence of the English fleet--then
but sixty-seven in number, and vastly their inferior in size and weight of
metal--they had lost the flagships of the Guipuzcoan and of the Andalusian
squadrons, with a general-admiral, four hundred and fifty officers and men,
and some one hundred thousand ducats of treasure. They had been
outmaneuvered, outsailed, and thoroughly maltreated by their antagonists,
and they had been unable to inflict a single blow in return. Thus the
"small fight" had been a cheerful one for the opponents of the Inquisition,
and the English were proportionally encouraged....

Never, since England was England, had such a sight been seen as now
revealed itself in those 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.

Farther along the coast, invisible, but known to be performing a most
perilous and vital service, was a squadron of Dutch vessels of all
sizes, lining both the inner and outer edges of the sandbanks off the
Flemish coasts, and swarming in all the estuaries and inlets of that
intricate and dangerous cruising-ground between Dunkirk and
Walcheren. Those fleets of Holland and Zeeland, numbering some one
hundred and fifty galleons, sloops, and fly-boats, under Warmond,
Nassau, Van der Does, De Moor, and Rosendael, lay patiently blockading
every possibl