d his instructions to their utmost
limits and even defied the custom of the service by holding no council
of war when deciding to swoop on Cadiz.

As they entered the harbor, the English saw sixty ships engaged in
preparations for the Great Armada. Many had no sails--to keep the crews
from deserting. Others were waiting for their guns to come from Italy.
Ten galleys rowed out to protect them. The weather and surroundings were
perfect for these galleys. But as they came end-on in line-abreast Drake
crossed their T in line-ahead with the shattering broadsides of four
Queen's ships which soon sent them flying. Each galley was the upright
of the T, each English sailing ship the corresponding crosspiece. Then
Drake attacked the shipping and wrecked it right and left. Next morning
he led the pinnaces and boats into the inner harbor, where they cut out
the big galleon belonging to Santa Cruz himself, the Spanish
commander-in-chief. Then the galleys got their chance again--an
absolutely perfect chance, because Drake's fleet was becalmed at the
very worst possible place for sailing ships and the very best possible
place for the well-oared galleys. But even under these extraordinary
circumstances the ships smashed the galleys up with broadside fire and
sent them back to cover. Then the Spaniards towed some fire-ships out.
But the English rowed for them, threw grappling irons into them, and
gave them a turn that took them clear. Then, for the last time, the
galleys came on, as bravely but as uselessly as ever. When Drake sailed
away he left the shipping of Cadiz completely out of action for months
to come, though fifteen sail escaped destruction in the inner harbor.
His own losses were quite insignificant.

The next objective was Cape St. Vincent, so famous through centuries of
naval history because it is the great strategic salient thrust out into
the Atlantic from the southwest corner of Europe, and thus commands the
flank approaches to and from the Mediterranean, to and from the coast of
Africa, and, in those days, the route to and from New Spain by way of
the Azores. Here Drake had trouble with Borough, his second-in-command,
a friend of cautious Burleigh and a man hide-bound in the warfare of the
past--a sort of English Don. Borough objected to Drake's taking decisive
action without the vote of a council of war. Remembering the terrors of
Italian textbooks, he had continued to regard the galleys with much
respect in the harb