greatest
seaman in the world, let him do the fighting in the proper way.

[Illustration: One of Drake's Men-of-War that Fought the Great Armada
in 1588.]

The southwest wind that blew Drake back brought the Armada out and up
the English Channel. Howard and Drake, their desperate week of taking
in stores at last quite done, were playing a game of bowls on the green
when Captain Fleming, of the ever famous _Golden Hind_, rushed up to
say the Spaniards were in sight of the Lizard, only sixty miles west.
Drake, knowing perfectly well what time there was to spare, and how
best to calm the people looking on, said, "There's time to finish the
game first and the Spaniards after." But the fleet got its sailing
orders on the spot; and all that fateful night the ships were working
out of Plymouth Sound. The Queen and her politicians, though patriotic
as any Sea-Dog, had, by keeping Drake so short of stores, very nearly
got their own fleet caught in just the same way as Drake had wished to
catch the Great Armada, that is, coming out of port, ship by ship,
against a united fleet outside. But Philip's silly plan, the
clumsiness of the Armada, and, above all, the supreme skill of the
English Sea-Dogs, put everything to rights again.

Next morning Drake was safely out at sea in the Channel, with
fifty-four ships, when he sighted a dim blur toward the west. This was
the Great Invincible Armada. Rain killed the wind, and the English lay
under bare poles, unseen by the Spaniards, who still left some of their
idle sails swinging to and fro. The great day had come at last.
Philip's Armada had drunk to _Der Tag_ (the day) of England's overthrow
just as the Germans did three centuries later; and nearly all the
Spaniards thought that thirty thousand Spaniards on the water were more
than a match for fifteen thousand English. But the Spaniards were six
thousand short, through sickness and desertion, and of the remaining
twenty-four thousand little more than a quarter were seamen. The rest
were soldiers, with many camp-followers. The fifteen thousand English,
on the other hand, were nearly all on board; and most of them had been
trained to sea fighting from their youth up. The Spaniards were
one-quarter seamen and three-quarters landsmen. The English were
three-quarters seamen and one-quarter landsmen; and most of these
landsmen were like the Marines of the present day, "soldier and sailor
too." Nor was this the only difference th