ixtus V., of which they had at last come to
take possession.

[The dates in the narrative will be always given according to the
New Style, then already adopted by Spain, Holland, and France,
although not by England. The dates thus given are, of course, ten
days later than they appear in contemporary English records.]

On the same day and night the blaze and smoke of ten thousand
beacon-fires from the Land's End to Margate, and from the Isle of Wight
to Cumberland, gave warning to every Englishman that the enemy was at
last upon them. Almost at that very instant intelligence had been brought
from the court to the Lord-Admiral at Plymouth, that the Armada,
dispersed and shattered by the gales of June, was not likely to make its
appearance that year; and orders had consequently been given to disarm
the four largest ships, and send them into dock. Even Walsingham, as
already stated, had participated in this strange delusion.

Before Howard had time to act upon this ill-timed suggestion--even had he
been disposed to do so--he received authentic intelligence that the great
fleet was off the Lizard. Neither he nor Francis Drake were the men to
lose time in such an emergency, and before that Friday, night was spent,
sixty of the best English ships had been warped out of Plymouth harbour.

On Saturday, 30th July, the wind was very light at southwest, with a mist
and drizzling rain, but by three in the afternoon the two fleets could
descry and count each other through the haze.

By nine o'clock, 31st July, about two miles from Looe, on the Cornish
coast, the fleets had their first meeting. There were 136 sail of the
Spaniards, of which ninety were large ships, and sixty-seven of the
English. It was a solemn moment. The long-expected Armada presented a
pompous, almost a theatrical appearance. The ships seemed arranged for a
pageant, in honour of a victory already won. Disposed in form of a
crescent, the horns of which were seven miles asunder, those gilded,
towered, floating castles, with their gaudy standards and their martial
music, moved slowly along the channel, with an air of indolent pomp.
Their captain-general, the golden Duke, stood in his private shot-proof
fortress, on the--deck of his great galleon the Saint Martin, surrounded
by generals of infantry, and colonels of cavalry, who knew as little as
he did himself of naval matters. The English vessels, on the other
hand--with a few exceptions, light, swift