in himself; for the Spaniards, coming up with the
wind, might catch him struggling out against the wind and crush his long
emerging column, bit by bit, precisely as he had intended crushing their
own column as it issued from the Tagus or Corunna.

But it was only the van that Fleming had sighted. Many a Spanish
straggler was still hull-down astern; and Sidonia had to wait for all to
close and form up properly.

Meanwhile Drake and Howard were straining every nerve to get out of
Plymouth. It was not their fault, but the Queen's-in-Council, that
Sidonia had unwittingly stolen this march on them. It was their glory
that they won the lost advantage back again. All afternoon and evening,
all through that summer night, the sea-dog crews were warping out of
harbor. Torches, flares, and cressets threw their fitful light on
toiling lines of men hauling on ropes that moved the ships apparently
like snails. But once in Plymouth Sound the whinnying sheaves and long
_yo-hoes_! told that all the sail the ships could carry was being made
for a life-or-death effort to win the weather gage. Thus beat the heart
of naval England that momentous night in Plymouth Sound, while beacons
blazed from height to height ashore, horsemen spurred off post-haste
with orders and dispatches, and every able-bodied landsman stood to
arms.

Next morning Drake was in the Channel, near the Eddystone, with
fifty-four sail, when he sighted a dim blur to windward through the
thickening mist and drizzling rain. This was the Great Armada. Rain came
on and killed the wind. All sail was taken in aboard the English fleet,
which lay under bare poles, invisible to the Spaniards, who still
announced their presence with some show of canvas.

In actual size and numbers the Spaniards were superior at first. But as
the week-long running fight progressed the English evened up with
reinforcements. Spanish vessels looked bigger than their tonnage, being
high built; and Spanish official reports likewise exaggerated the size
because their system of measurement made their three tons equal to an
English four. In armament and seamen-gunners the English were perhaps
five times as strong as the Armada--and seamen-gunners won the day. The
English seamen greatly outnumbered the Spanish seamen, utterly surpassed
them in seamanship, and enjoyed the further advantage of having far
handier vessels to work. The Spanish grand total, for all ranks and
ratings was thirty thousand men; the