when they had exhausted their ammunition, in the name
of his queen and mistress he summoned the place to surrender. In the
name of his lord and master the Spanish captain laughed at him.
Whereupon Drake, more obstinate than ever, sent down to the fleet for
fagots, and began piling them against the outer gate to fire it. So
desperate was the resistance that again and again the attempt failed.
For two hours the struggle lasted. As fast as the defenders threw down
the fire, the English piled it up again; and in the midst of the smoke
and the bullets the admiral toiled like a common seaman, with his arms
full of fagots and his face black with soot. How long his obstinacy
would have continued it is impossible to say, but at the end of the two
hours the Spanish commandant sank under his wounds and the garrison
surrendered. Daunted by a feat which every one regarded as little short
of a miracle, the castle and monastery of St. Vincent, together with
another fort near it, capitulated at the magician's first summons, and
left him in complete possession of the anchorage to water the fleet
undisturbed.

Having fired the captured strongholds, and tumbled their guns over the
cliffs into the sea, Drake returned to the fleet to find the sailors had
not been idle. Between St. Vincent and a village some nine miles to the
eastward which they had been ordered to burn, they had taken forty-seven
barks and caravels laden with stores for the Armada, and destroyed
between fifty and sixty fishing-boats with miles of nets. The
tunny-fishery, on which the whole of the adjacent country chiefly
depended for its subsistence, was annihilated. For the time Drake's work
on the Algarve coast was done, and, having watered the fleet and fished
up the captured guns, he sailed for Lisbon.

His own idea had been to land there and smite Philip's preparation at
its heart, but this the Government had expressly forbidden. Still he
hoped that the havoc he had made and the insults he had put on the
Spanish coasts might goad Santa Cruz to come out and fight him. For
three days he lay off Cascaes, in sight of Lisbon, threatening an attack
and sending polished taunts to the Spanish admiral. He offered to convoy
him to England if his course lay that way; he took prizes under his very
nose; with his fleet in loose order he sailed up to the very entrance of
the harbor; but, though seven galleys lay on their oars watching him
from the mouth of the Tagus, Santa Cruz wou