nd paid Hawkins forty thousand
pounds, the worth of about two million dollars now. Then Hawkins used
the information he had picked up behind the Spanish scenes to unravel
the Ridolfi Plot for putting Mary on the throne in 1572, the year of St.
Bartholomew. No wonder Philip hated sea-dogs!

Things new and old having reached this pass, the whole of England, bar
the Marians, were eager for the great 'Indies Voyage' of 1585. Londoners
crowded down to Woolwich 'with great jolitie' to see off their own
contingent on its way to join Drake's flag at Plymouth. Very probably
Shakespeare went down too, for that famous London merchantman, the
_Tiger_, to which he twice alludes--once in _Macbeth_ and once in
_Twelfth Night_--was off with this contingent. Such a private fleet had
never yet been seen: twenty-one ships, eight smart pinnaces, and
twenty-three hundred men of every rank and rating. The Queen was
principal shareholder and managing director. But, as usual in colonial
attacks intended for disavowal if necessity arose, no prospectus or
other document was published, nor were the shareholders of this
joint-stock company known in any quite official way. It was the size of
the fleet and the reputation of the officers that made it a
national affair. Drake, now forty, was 'Admiral'; Frobisher, of
North-West-Passage fame, was 'Vice'; Knollys, the Queen's own cousin,
'Rear.' Carleill, a famous general, commanded the troops and sailed in
Shakespeare's _Tiger_. Drake's old crew from the _Golden Hind_ came
forward to a man, among them Wright, 'that excellent mathematician and
ingineer,' and big Tom Moone, the lion of all boarding-parties, each in
command of a ship.

But Elizabeth was just then weaving the threads of an unusually
intricate diplomatic pattern; so doubts and delays, orders and
counter-orders vexed Drake to the last. Sir Philip Sidney, too, came
down as a volunteer; which was another sore vexation, since his European
fame would have made him practically joint commander of the fleet,
although he was not a naval officer at all. But he had the good sense to
go back; whereupon Drake, fearing further interruptions from the court,
ordered everything to be tumbled into the nearest ships and hurried off
to sea under a press of sail.

The first port of call was Vigo in the northwestern corner of Spain,
where Drake's envoy told the astonished governor that Elizabeth wanted
to know what Philip intended doing about embargoes now. If