t that is
now the coast of Maine, and brought his ship to anchor by Mount Desert.
Argall, a swift and high-handed person, fished on dry land. He swept
into his net the Jesuits on Mount Desert, set half of them in an open
boat to meet with what ship they might, and brought the other half
captive to Jamestown. Later, he appeared before Port Royal, where
he burned the cabins, slew the cattle, and drove into the forest the
settler Frenchmen. But Port Royal and the land about it called Acadia,
though much hurt, survived Argall's fishing.*

* Argall, on his fishing trip, has been credited with
attacking not only the French in Acadia but the Dutch
traders on Manhattan. But there are grounds for doubt if he
did the latter.

There was also on Virginia in these days the shadow of Spain. In 1611
the English had found upon the beach near Point Comfort three Spaniards
from a Spanish caravel which, as the Englishmen had learned with alarm,
"was fitted with a shallop necessarie and propper to discover freshetts,
rivers, and creekes." They took the three prisoner and applied for
instructions to Dale, who held them to be spies and clapped them into
prison at Point Comfort.

That Dale's suspicions were correct, is proved by a letter which the
King of Spain wrote in cipher to the Spanish Ambassador in London
ordering him to confer with the King as to the liberty of three
prisoners whom Englishmen in Virginia have captured. The three are "the
Alcayde Don Diego de Molino, Ensign Marco Antonio Perez, and Francisco
Lembri an English pilot, who by my orders went to reconnoitre those
ports." Small wonder that Dale was apprehensive. "What may be the
daunger of this unto us," he wrote home, "who are here so few, so weake,
and unfortified,... I refer me to your owne honorable knowledg."

Months pass, and the English Ambassador to Spain writes from Madrid that
he "is not hasty to advertise anything upon bare rumours, which hath
made me hitherto forbeare to write what I had generally heard of their
intents against Virginia, but now I have been... advertised that without
question they will speedily attempt against our plantation there. And
that it is a thing resolved of, that ye King of Spain must run
any hazard with England rather than permit ye English to settle
there....Whatsoever is attempted, I conceive will be from ye Havana."

Rumors fly back and forth. The next year 1613--the Ambassador writes
from Madrid: "They have