n board the _Buonaventura_. There before their
eyes was, if not the Armada itself, the materials which were to fit the
Armada for the seas. Did they dare to go in with him and destroy them?
There were batteries at the harbour mouth, but Drake's mariners had
faced Spanish batteries at St. Domingo and Carthagena and had not found
them very formidable. Go in? Of course they would. Where Drake would
lead the corsairs of Plymouth were never afraid to follow. The
vice-admiral pleaded danger to her Majesty's ships. It was not the
business of an English fleet to be particular about danger. Straight in
they went with a fair wind and a flood tide, ran past the batteries and
under a storm of shot, to which they did not trouble themselves to wait
to reply. The poor vice-admiral followed reluctantly in the _Lion_. A
single shot hit the _Lion_, and he edged away out of range, anchored,
and drifted to sea again with the ebb. But Drake and all the rest dashed
on, sank the guardship--a large galleon--and sent flying a fleet of
galleys which ventured too near them and were never seen again.

Further resistance there was none--absolutely none. The crews of the
store ships escaped in their boats to land. The governor of Cadiz, the
same Duke of Medina Sidonia who the next year was to gain a disastrous
immortality, fled 'like a tall gentleman' to raise troops and prevent
Drake from landing. Drake had no intention of landing. At his extreme
leisure he took possession of the Spanish shipping, searched every
vessel, and carried off everything that he could use. He detained as
prisoners the few men that he found on board, and then, after doing his
work deliberately and completely, he set the hulls on fire, cut the
cables, and left them to drive on the rising tide under the walls of the
town--a confused mass of blazing ruin. On the 12th of April he had
sailed from Plymouth; on the 19th he entered Cadiz Harbour; on the 1st
of May he passed out again without the loss of a boat or a man. He said
in jest that he had singed the King of Spain's beard for him. In sober
prose he had done the King of Spain an amount of damage which a million
ducats and a year's labour would imperfectly replace. The daring
rapidity of the enterprise astonished Spain, and astonished Europe more
than the storm of the West Indian towns. The English had long teeth, as
Santa Cruz had told Philip's council, and the teeth would need drawing
before Mass would be heard again at West