ignal gun from the _San Martin_ ordered the whole
fleet to slip their cables and stand out to sea.

Orders given in panic are doubly unwise, for they spread the terror in
which they originate. The danger from the fire-ships was chiefly from
the effect on the imagination, for they appear to have drifted by and
done no real injury. And it speaks well for the seamanship and courage
of the Spaniards that they were able, crowded together as they were, at
midnight and in sudden alarm to set their canvas and clear out without
running into one another. They buoyed their cables, expecting to return
for them at daylight, and with only a single accident, to be mentioned
directly, they executed successfully a really difficult manoeuvre.

The Duke was delighted with himself. The fire-ships burnt harmlessly
out. He had baffled the inventions of the _endemoniada gente_. He
brought up a league outside the harbour, and supposed that the whole
Armada had done the same. Unluckily for himself, he found it at daylight
divided into two bodies. The _San Martin_ with forty of the best
appointed of the galleons were riding together at their anchors. The
rest, two-thirds of the whole, having no second anchors ready, and
inexperienced in Channel tides and currents, had been lying to. The west
wind was blowing up. Without seeing where they were going they had
drifted to leeward, and were two leagues off, towards Gravelines,
dangerously near the shore. The Duke was too ignorant to realise the
full peril of his situation. He signalled to them to return and rejoin
him. As the wind and tide stood it was impossible. He proposed to follow
them. The pilots told him that if he did the whole fleet might be lost
on the banks. Towards the land the look of things was not more
encouraging.

One accident only had happened the night before. The Capitana galleass,
with Don Hugo de Moncada and eight hundred men on board, had fouled her
helm in a cable in getting under way and had become unmanageable. The
galley slaves disobeyed orders, or else Don Hugo was as incompetent as
his commander-in-chief. The galleass had gone on the sands, and as the
tide ebbed had fallen over on her side. Howard, seeing her condition,
had followed her in the _Ark_ with four or five other of the Queen's
ships, and was furiously attacking her with his boats, careless of
neutrality laws. Howard's theory was, as he said, to pluck the feathers
one by one from the Spaniard's wing, and here