to reveal Drake's astonishing position. Immediately pinnaces went
scurrying to Sidonia for orders. But he had none to give. At one in the
morning he learnt some more dumbfounding news: that the English had
nearly caught him at Corunna, that Drake and Howard had joined forces,
and that both were now before him.

Nor was even this the worst. For while the distracted Sidonia was
getting his fleet into the 'eagle formation,' so suitable for galleys
whose only fighting men were soldiers, the English fleet was stealing
the weather gage, his one remaining natural advantage. An English
squadron of eight sail manoeuvred coast-wise on the Armada's inner
flank, while, unperceived by the Spanish lookout, Drake stole away to
sea, beat round its outer flank, and then, making the most of a westerly
slant in the shifting breeze, edged in to starboard. The Spaniards saw
nothing till it was too late, Drake having given them a berth just wide
enough to keep them quiet. But when the sun rose, there, only a few
miles off to windward, was the whole main body of the English fleet,
coming on in faultless line-ahead, heeling nicely over on the port tack
before the freshening breeze, and, far from waiting for the Great
Armada, boldly bearing down to the attack. With this consummate move the
victory was won.

The rest was slaughter, borne by the Spaniards with a resolution that
nothing could surpass. With dauntless tenacity they kept their 'eagle
formation,' so useful at Lepanto, through seven dire days of most
one-sided fighting. Whenever occasion seemed to offer, the Spaniards did
their best to close, to grapple, and to board, as had their heroes at
Lepanto. But the English merely laughed, ran in, just out of reach,
poured in a shattering broadside between wind and water, stood off to
reload, fired again, with equal advantage, at longer range, caught the
slow galleons end-on, raked them from stem to stern, passed to and fro
in one, long, deadly line-ahead, concentrating at will on any given
target; and did all this with well-nigh perfect safety to themselves. In
quite a different way close-to, but to the same effect at either
distance, long or short, the English 'had the range of them,' as sailors
say to-day. Close-to, the little Spanish guns fired much too high to
hull the English vessels, lying low and trim upon the water, with whose
changing humors their lines fell in so much more happily than those of
any lumbering Spaniards could. Far-off